From: sunofmusic@gmail.com   
      
   The butterfly has long been a powerful symbol of rebirth. The lowly   
   caterpillar's emergence from its cocoon into a thing of beauty in flight is a   
   vivid embodiment of transformation and self-realization. The title of   
   Butterfly Blue, the stunning and    
   soulful new album by vocalist Halie Loren, evokes those poetic images, but   
   tinged with a sense of bittersweet melancholy.   
      
   Loren has found quite a bit of metamorphosis over the past few years, growing   
   from a West-Coast singer-songwriter to an international jazz celebrity in   
   Japan and Asia, where the singer has now performed dozens of sold-out concerts   
   and found her music    
   climbing to the pinnacle of many a sales chart, including three consecutive   
   Billboard Jazz #1 albums in Japan.   
      
   Her career and musical growth continues into 2015, the year which finds Loren   
   spreading her proverbial wings wider than ever before with the release of   
   Butterfly Blue, drawing inspiration from blues and soul music influences in a   
   deeper way than she has    
   in the past, while firmly and unapologetically planting one foot in the jazz   
   realm and the other in pop. She does this without losing any of the warmth,   
   charm and sensuality that has always characterized her unique vocal approach.   
   But the thread that    
   connects the album's mix of jazz and Songbook standards, reimagined pop songs,   
   and original pieces is captured in that seemingly contradictory title."   
      
   "A lot of these songs were chosen because they explored different aspects of   
   imprisonment and freedom," Loren explains. "Many of them have to do with ideas   
   of being beholden to thoughts, feelings, and experiences from which you alone   
   can also free    
   yourself."   
      
   The album's title marries two original pieces that exemplify that theme.   
   "Butterfly" was written by Loren, who imagined the insect's transformation   
   from the caterpillar's point of view, facing the prospect of having to pass   
   through a literal death in    
   order to experience rebirth, relating the experience to that of human   
   suffering being the catalyst for spiritual growth. "Blue," one of two songs   
   penned by guitarist and songwriter Daniel Gallo, expresses empathy and   
   promises of a brighter future to a    
   lover in the deep throes of melancholy. Joining the two, Loren says, "really   
   felt like an apropos combination. It's about finding the way through the pain   
   of experience to a new, wiser, more beautiful version of yourself. But you   
   have to go through the    
   journey; that's where the real pain happens."   
      
   The two songs also boldly spotlight the album's musical influences: the   
   stabbing horns and soulful pleas of "Butterfly" conjure soul touchstones like   
   Otis Redding or Etta James, while "Blue" lives up to its name through Gallo's   
   gut-punch guitar and Loren'   
   s powerfully communicated longing. While she's quick to say that Butterfly   
   Blue is by no means a blues or soul album, those storied genres color the   
   whole album. "It has touches of the things that have heavily moved me   
   musically over the years," she says.   
    "I've been a fan of a lot of different kinds of music my whole life, so I was   
   interested in stretching out beyond the territory I've explored over the last   
   few albums and digging deeper into more of my bluesy roots."   
      
   To realize those ambitions, Loren added horns and strings to the arrangements   
   in a more extensive way than she has in the past, though with a light and   
   always effective touch. These additional musicians, William Seiji Marsh and   
   Gallo on guitars, David    
   Larsen on saxophone, Joe Freuen on trombone, Dana Heitman on trumpet, Rob   
   Birdwell on flugelhorn and trumpet, and Katherine Dudney on cello, join   
   Loren's longtime core band, (pianist and co-producer Matt Treder, bassist Mark   
   Schneider and drummer Brian    
   West) featured on the majority of the singer's releases to-date. Together the   
   ensemble subtly nods toward classic soul blues sounds within a modern jazz   
   context.   
      
   Butterfly Blue begins on a more winsome note, however, with the wordless vocal   
   melody of Loren's "Yellow Bird." Despite the playfulness of the song's Tin Pan   
   Alley feel, however, the lyrics fit the album's darker theme. "The idea of   
   freedom being an    
   internal feeling rather than an external reality came to me in the image of a   
   bird in a cage," Loren says. "I thought, 'What might they dream about?' On the   
   surface, it's kind of a cute song with a cute melody, but the meaning of the   
   lyric goes deeper    
   into more esoteric notions of how subjective our perceptions of 'reality' are,   
   and to what degree we are masters of our own experiences in this life."   
      
   The notion of using animals to express deep-felt emotion comes easily to   
   Loren, who has always felt a strong connection to the natural world. Born and   
   raised in Alaska, she's lived for the last 17 years in Oregon, where she   
   maintains a strong connection    
   to the outdoors.   
      
   Loren's rendition of Charles Trenet's "I Wish You Love" is a unique hybrid of   
   the original French lyrics, with a brief detour into the better-known but less   
   expressive English lyrics. "Stormy Weather" is stretched into a sultry,   
   teasingly languorous    
   blues, while "Our Love Is Here To Stay" offers a sense of familial nostalgia.   
      
   "After The Fall", the second song penned by Gallo, tells a story of a woman in   
   the winter of life, reminiscing about a long lost love through music that   
   formed the soundtrack for those precious memories of youth. "I had the rare   
   opportunity to hear this    
   song as it was coming into being through hands other than my own: an original   
   song I didn't write but that was entirely new to the world, crafted with such   
   a richly emotional story and vivid imagery - it was love at first listen."   
      
   "I've Got You Under My Skin" continues the album's theme of emotional or   
   spiritual imprisonment, here captured in the song's tale of uncontrollable   
   obsession, heightened by the spare, snake-charmer tone of the arrangement.   
   "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" is    
   given a darker-than-usual perspective that illustrates the thoroughfare's   
   hopeless denizens.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)