Lori Carsillo - Sugar And Smoke (2014) FLAC

A singer of nuanced and unpretentious style, San Francisco Bay Area jazz singer Lori Carsillo (an Italian name, pronounced car-SILL-oh) follows the success of her first two jazz CDs, with Sugar & Smoke. On this release, she delves into 12 classic 60s-era songs - standards and a few rare jazz gems - with her own fresh, vibrant take. Along with an assemblage of incredibly talented Bay Area musicians, including Adam Shulman on piano and Smith Dobson on vibes, Carsillo has, as Paul Weideman of The New Mexican Pasatiempo Magazine observes, “a gorgeous voice, like velvet.”

Sugar & Smoke showcases Carsillo’s vocal and emotional range with tunes like the vivacious Sergio Mendes classic “Cinnamon & Clove”, her wistful and dreamy “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning”, and the standard “The Thrill is Gone” reworked as an urgent jazz waltz. Jazz historian and writer Scott Yanow calls Sugar & Smoke “a constant delight.”