Maria Muldaur - Love Wants to Dance (2004)

Recording for more than 30 years, Maria Muldaur has moved from jug-band music to Tin Pan Alley pop, blues, and jazz. It is the latter two genres that have most defined her output since the 1980s. A Woman Alone With the Blues, from 2003, was Muldaur's tribute to jazz vocalist Peggy Lee, and she's followed that with this set of 10 thematically linked odes to love. It's a testament to the subtle dramatics of her voice that she is equally convincing when singing of love on the rise, or of its melancholy demise. Smartly sequenced and warmly arranged, the disc moves gracefully from the sunshine to the moonlight. From dreamy anticipation to heartache, this is a portrait of the varied and elusive faces of love. --David Greenberger