Lovely lush Latin jazz vocals Lorraina Marro – Love Is For All Time
May 24, 2021
Lovely lush Latin jazz vocals Lorraina Marro – LOVE IS FOR ALL TIME: Lorraina is in our review queue for the first time, and as I listen to her lovely lush Latin jazz vocals, I’m really impressed . . .
Pianist Steve Rawlins, guitarist Grant Geissman, trumpeter Dr. Bobby Rodriguez, and tenor saxophonist Rickey Woodman give her performance of Joe Sample’s “When The World Turns Blue” . . . an excellent boost… of course, it’s her vocal that is going to make DJ’s across the globe choose this for their playlists frequently!
I thoroughly enjoyed the laid-back feel Lorraina creates on the beautiful “I’m Not Alone”, and have no doubt that you’ll be playing this tune over and over again.
Lorraina will tell you all about her “baby” on “My Baby Just Cares For Me”; the recording is flawless, and the players are all “spot-on” with high-energy… I absolutely LOVED the bass lines on this song!
It was (unquestionably) the upbeat playing and energy on “The Night Has a Thousand Eyes” that made me choose it as my personal favorite of the ten tantalizing tunes Lorraina and her band offer up for your jazz journey.
I give Lorraina and all her players a HIGHLY RECOMMENDED rating, with an “EQ” (energy quotient) score of 4.98 for this excellent jazz adventure. Dick Metcalf, Contemporary Fusion Reviews
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May 25, 2021
LORRAINA MARRO/Love is For All Time: . . . originally inspired by the great black female vocalists of the 50s turns in one of those delightfully surprising jazz vocal sets that comes at you from out of nowhere. With solid cats like Grant Geissman in tow, her lilting voice does justice to jazz and Latin tracks that edge into the saudade realm and also highlight what an underrated cat Will Jennings is as a bunch of his tunes fit right in with the classics. A grown up jazz vocal date that fires on all cylinders, this is no exercise in nostalgia as her work is right in the moment throughout. Chris Spector, Editor & Publisher, Midwest Record
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June 4, 2021
Vocalist Lorraina Marro has gathered ten lovely and memorable songs for this, her third CD release. I became fascinated by her choice of repertoire. For example, she introduces me to “I’m Not Alone” by Ivan Guimaraes Lins, Victor Martins & Will Jennings. It’s a Latin tinged ballad that lyrically praises a strong relationship, both in person and in memory. It’s a poignantly beautiful song and features a lovely solo by Grant Geissman on guitar. Another gem is the Arthur Hamilton tune, “Rain Sometimes,” that I had never heard and thoroughly enjoyed, with lyrics like:
“…There’ll be Champagne sometime, Lobster flown from Maine sometime; we’ll ride the gravy train sometime, just you wait and see” are such great storytelling words.
Steve Rawlins is a sensitive and competent accompanist on this project and also arranges many of the songs. Ms. Marro has surrounded herself with some of the best players in Southern California like Rickey Woodard on tenor saxophone, Dr. Bobby Rodriguez on trumpet, Jennifer Jane Leitham on bass and Steve Pemberton manning the drums. The tracks are strong and compensate for this seasoned veteran’s uncontrollable tremolo that textures her voice. She compensates for that with an emotional delivery that allows her sincerity to shine though. . . She also reminds us how much we love the Great American Song Book with tunes like “Stairway to the Stars,” and “The Night Has a Thousand Eyes.”
Dee Dee McNeil, Musicalmemoirs.wordpress.com
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June 14, 2021
World-wise toned vocalist Lorraina Marro teams up with a core of Steve Rawlins/p, Grant Geissman/g, Jennifer Jane Leitham/b, Steve Pemberton/dr and guests Dr. Bobby Rodriguez/tp and Rickey Woodard/ts for some mature reads of standards and beyond. Her warm vibrato sways with Woodard on the classy “Stairway to the Stars” and is gloriously sensuous with the doctor on “Viajera Del Rio.” In a trio setting, she is cozy with Leitham on “My Baby Just Cares for Me’ while most luscious with Geissman on her most comfortable outing, a latin lover of “Esta Tarde Vi Loover”. If she did an entire album of that last song she’d woo the crowd! George Harris, Jazz Weekly
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June 25, 2021
A whimsical comment from a prominent jazz critic says it all about Lorraina Marro, a stylish and sophisticated jazz singer, standards interpreter and storyteller extraordinaire who was named one of Los Angeles’ Jazz & Blues Living Legend Honorees in 2015.
The quote, which we can apply just as passionately in any discussion of Marro’s delightfully stylish and sophisticated new collection Love is For All Time, reads: “There's that moment of magic when the night and the day are precisely balanced on the horizon, and magic is in the gentle breeze. There's that moment of magic when the air is so still that you can actually hear inspiration call to you. And there's Lorraina Marro on stage.”
The singer lives up to these words gracefully, purposefully and romantically/poignantly on a set featuring the backing and stunning soloing of some of L.A.’s best jazz cats – pianist Steve Rawlins (who also arranged or co-arranged every track), bassist Jennifer Leitham, guitarist Grant Geissman, drummer Steve Pemberton, saxophonist Rickey Woodard and trumpeter Dr. Bobby Rodriguez. It’s a testament to her grace, emotional range and sultry vocal tone that she takes decades-old (mostly Songbook) songs long associated with jazz legends like Billie Holiday (“I Wished On The Moon”), Nina Simone (a witty rendition of “My Baby Just Cares For Me,” rife with contemporary references), Ella Fitzgerald (“Stairway to the Stars”) and Barbra Streisand (“People”) and comfortably and swingingly makes them her own.
Beyond the lush standards, Marro brings touches of exotica to the mix via two of the set’s most compelling tracks, the trumpet laced “Viajera Del Rio” (sung completely in Spanish) and “Yesterday I Heard the Rain,” an intimate duet with Geissman sung in both Spanish and English. Jonathan Widran, The JW Vibe
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July 21, 2021
This simply divine new jazz album opens on the sweeping gossamer, and funky trumpet of Stairway to The Stars and the delicate I'm Not Alone and follows those up with the finger-snapping delights of The Night Has a Thousand Eyes, the piano magnificent of Rain Sometimes, and then delivers one of my own personal favorites here, Marro's upright bass-led rendition of My Baby Just Cares For Me. . . .
Anne Carlini, Russell Trunk's Exclusive Magazine
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March 23, 2022
Vocalist Lorraina Marro recently released a new album, LOVE IS FOR ALL TIME, which has been warmly received. (“She raised the bar and the A plus musicians followed suit,” said one critic). Marro, who was born and raised in L.A., is bi-lingual thanks to her Ecuadorian mother; on LOVE she sings twice in Spanish, with impeccable diction and heart-felt emotion.
The same goes for her vocalizing in general. Believing that “love is not for sometimes, it’s for all time through all the seasons of our lives,” Marro throws herself into such standards as “Stairway to the Stars” and “I Wished on the Moon,” showing the power and intensity that calls to mind Nancy Wilson and Barbra Streisand. But her interpretation of “People” is entirely her own: impassioned, beautifully-shaped and memorably-delivered.
Backing her are Steve Rawlins (piano), Jennifer Leitham (bass) and Steve Pemberton (drums), joined by three guest musicians: Grant Geissman (guitar), Dr Bobby Rodriguez (trumpet) and Rickey Woodard (tenor sax). Together they help make LOVE one of the year’s most compelling jazz albums. Willard Manus, Lively-Arts.com