Kaiso Stories

Silkheart, 2011
74:21
8 Tracks

Personnel:

Roy Campbell – trumpets, reeds
Daniel Carter – reeds
William Parker – double bass, gembri
Charles Downs – drums
FV – voice

Track Listings:

1. Maryanne Revisited
2. Three Friends Advised
3. Kitch Goes Home
4. Saltfish Refried
5. John Gilman Wants Tobacco
6. An Open Letter
7. De Night A De Wake
8. We Is We Trini

Roots tributes rarely sound as fascinating or as cultishly seductive as Kaiso Stories…(Victor) gives you a sense of what Betty  Carter would have sounded like with the Art Ensemble of Chicago.  Trumpeter Roy Campbell and Daniel Carter play their roles as foils with graceful restraint while the great William Parker, on gembri and duduk, as well as double bass, prods the singer with soulful finesse. Having emerged as a vocal artist with a real vision, Victor rises to a higher level of inspiration here.”
Lloyd Sachs, JazzTimes

“Victor is proving to be one of the most extraordinary vocalists on the scene today and here she comes off as actress, sorceress, and temptress, working an area of rough, declamatory improvisations in the tradition of Jeanne Lee and Abbey Lincoln but with her own burning passion and galvanic force….Other Dimensions is passionate and inspired on this disc and Victor is a wonder to behold. It’s been a while since I heard Free Jazz with this much holy fire in it. One of the best discs of the year without question.”
-Jerome Wilson, Cadence 

“She approaches these songs with wide-open intent, taking the lyrics (many of them slyly political) and adding her individual approach: stretching the syllables out, using repetition, singing long, loopy melodic lines. While her style derives from Betty Carter and Jeanne Lee, it’s her emotional core and rich, honeyed vocal timbre that sets her apart. Other Dimensions In Music’s full-bore approach is perfect for the project, rhythmically open yet with an African pulse underneath. The frontline blends with Victor in remarkable dialogues; Campbell, in particular, shares a close affinity with her, as the disc’s opening attests. Victor is at the vanguard of jazz singers and Kaiso Stories is yet another important addition to her discography.”
Robert Iannapollo, Signal to Noise

“While the record is steeped in Victor’s heritage, even the accents and inflections she grew up hearing, it’d be a mistake to call Kaiso Stories a calypso record. It’s free jazz with source material and as such is an unusual and wonderful album.”
Kurt Gottschalk , The New York City Jazz Record

9/10 – “Conjuring up the spirit of Jeanne Lee, Fay Victor speaks, sings, and wails like a horn through variations of eight Caribbean tunes from the 1930s through early ’70s. A wonderful combination, simultaneously true to its origins and entirely new.”
Laurence Joseph, Montreal Mirror

***** “Victor’s voice sonically melds with Carter and Campbell, becoming a third horn, adding compelling counterpoint throughout. In a civilized world with a forward thinking music industry and curious listenership, in a culture a where Art was as valued as everyone likes to say it is,Kaiso Stories would be a crossover sensation, charting for months and finding a grateful audience that no Improvised music had found before. Until such time, it is one for the initiated to treasure.”
-Stanley Zappa, Free Jazz

‎”The meeting between ODIM and Fay Victor (or “connection” as characterized by Fay Victor in her touching and illuminating liner notes) gives birth to a music like a swollen river, an awakened volcano which has been asleep too long, and is finally revived. This is music of heritage and music of urgency”
-Pierre Lemarchand, Le Son de Grisli

‎”Vocalists are far and between in free jazz-but in Fay Victor one has come to the fore who is the equal of her co-musicians, even if those happen to Other Dimensions In Music’s big guns…with a singer like Victor you are guaranteed immunity from sterile vocal performance and old hat tricks.”
Guy Peters, www.goddeau.com

“Fay dug deep into her roots in Trinidad and Tobago and came up with a handful of traditional songs to reinvent. What we have here is a blend of Caribbean melodies and swinging, fluid, occasionally ecstatic free jazz. This project is a complete success and a wonderful opportunity to discover this singer.”
-Francois Couture, Monsieur Délire

www.silkheart.se

YEAR-END Love for KAISO STORIES!

Best New Release – Album of the Year
Best New Release – Vocal
>>The New York City jazz Record – January 2012

Laurence Donohue-Greene’s Top 10 for 2011
>>http://members.jazzjournalists.org/2011Bestof?mode=PostView&bmi=766809

 

John Szwed’s Best Vocal Release
>>http://members.jazzjournalists.org/2011Bestof?mode=PostView&bmi=767922

Derek Taylor’s List on DUSTED
>>http://www.dustedmagazine.com/features/1007

CKUT Jazz Director’s Top 20 + 3

FreeJazz Albums of the Year for 2011
>>http://freejazz-stef.blogspot.com/2011/12/albums-of-year-2011.html

Bare

Greene Avenue Music 2010
59:20
9 Tracks

Listen:

Mood Indigo
Blue Monk
Mother Earthr

Personnel:

FV-voice
Anders Nilsson-guitar

Track Listing:

1.  Mood Indigo
2.  If I Had My Way
3.  Dry/Baby Don’t You Love Me No More
4.  If You Don’t Give Me Just What I Want
5.  Blue Monk
6. I’ll Get Along Somehow
7.  Joshua Fit The Battle of Jericho
8. Rockin’ Chair
9. Mother Earth

“Anders Nilsson and Fay Victor open up their first duo record with Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo” and they do it in a way that makes you half feel like you’ve never heard it before and whole feel that you want to hear more. Victor’s voice and Nilsson’s guitar aren’t beholden to Ellington. They’re beholden only to the song -­ enveloping it, possessing it and freeing it again. Which, time was, what made the blues the blues, back when it was a cry, before it was just a beat.”
Kurt Gottschalk , The New York City Jazz Record

‎”Accomplished vocal modernist Fay Victor manages to deconstruct the tradition of jazz song without pretension or tedium—quite a high-wire feat, if you ask us.”
–Time Out New York

“excellent…”
–Nate Chinen, The New York Times

“This music is so personal yet so universal, heartfelt, challenging and alive.”
–Richard Kamins, Step Tempest

The FreeSong Suite

Greene Avenue Music 2009
60:03
3 Rooms/10 Tracks

Listen:

Gone Fishin’
Night Ties
Joe’s Car

Personnel:

FV-voice, compositions
Anders Nilsson- electric guitar
Ken Filiano – bass, effects
Michael ‘TA’ Thompson- drums, percussion

Track Listing:

1.  Seasons
2.  Dry
3.  Bob and Weave
4.  Night Ties
5.  Joe’s Car
6.  Stemming
7.  Gone Fishing
8.  Ideal Situation
9.  Heating Up
10. Seasons – Reprise

“…hypnotic in its flow, every song in the three sections of the suite a masterpiece of compressed story-telling…”
–Gary Lucas, guitarist/composer (from the liner notes)

View Lyrics for The FreeSong Suite HERE.

Press Quotes:

“A jazz singer who makes her notes slow, wide and meaningful—she often sounds like an evening-out of Betty Carter and Abbey Lincoln—Fay Victor uses a great and simple concept on The FreeSong Suite (Greene Avenue Music)…a studio recording organized like a live set. This means the band flows from one song into another, without knowing where it’s going next…these songs have distinct melodic character: fascinating ballads with Anders Nilsson’s country-bluesy guitar soloing, drum chants, some careful free improvising.”
-Ben Ratliff, The New York Times

“The whole thing is as if Joni Mitchell wrote lyrics for a lost Betty Carter prog-rock album — and it totally works.”
-Patrick Jarenwattananon, 10 Greatest Moments from Jazz Recordings in 2009 – NPR Jazz

“Fay Victor has a rich, commanding voice that’s matched by a sense of adventure, like Betty Carter if that late singer hung around the current Downtown New York scene. Guitarist Anders Nilsson, bassist Ken Filiano and drummer Michael T.A. Thompson work closely with Victor, combining free improvisation, blues, and some kind of rock style…they always stay on an even keel with the vocals, whose ease blurs the lines between written word and spontaneous story.”
-Mike Shanley , JazzTimes

“Victor’s rich, creamy voice reminds me of heavy hitters like Betty Carter, Abbey Lincoln, and Jeanne Lee, and like them she’s restlessly creative, carving out her own unpredictable path…no matter what’s happening around her she’s always a highly communicative singer. Her original material has an ingrained storytelling quality that comes through even when the music is relatively abstract”
-Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader

“Victor’s soulful, emotive delivery combines with avant-tinged invention, placing her alongside great vocal innovators like Betty Carter, Jeanne Lee, Sheila Jordan…a truly creative singer with the chops to accomplish whatever she wants, but the good taste to ensure that substance always trumps style…The Freesong Suite is a vocal album that stands well above the pack; a welcome respite from the unwieldy preponderance of unimaginative vocal jazz albums hitting the market.”
-John Kelman, allaboutjazz.com

“The Fay Victor Ensemble’s The FreeSong Suite (Greene Avenue, 2009) is a tour de force of writing, improvisation and performance. Victor and her band paint one fluid word picture after another, linking these composed sections with free playing that is smart, muscular and emotional. From free improv to the blues to alt-rock and back again, The FreeSong Suite is easily one of my top 10 records of 2009.”
-Jason Crane, The Jazz Session

It’s rare in jazz for a singer to serve as anything other than the spotlit centerpiece, but Fay Victor is an unusually generous bandleader. That diplomacy allows the New York native to stretch her warm alto around elongated figures and conceptual compositions on last year’s The FreeSong Suite, a fearless foray stringing together several motifs into one stream-of-consciousness whole.
-Areif Sless-Kitain, Time Out Chicago

“The FreeSong Suite, peers into the NYC-based vocalist’s challenging and rewarding world of captivating vocal work and stirring spontaneity.”

-Andrew Zender, PopMatters.com

“Victor scats, vocalizes, chips, mumbles and sings bluesy chromatics or angular displays of dexterity, delivering the unexpected with beauty, depth and innovation.”
-Wilbur MacKenzie, All About Jazz-New York

“’The FreeSong Suite’ has the feeling of something new and significant. It lifts her above the ranks of most female jazz singers not only with what it delivers, but also with the even greater rewards it promises”.  Music Grade: A
-Lloyd Sachs,  Vinyl Blues

“Fay Victor’s voice is reminiscent of Betty Carter’s siren call mixed with the go-for-broke improvising of someone like Ellen Christi…a breathtakingly original set.”
-Jerome Wilson, Cadence Magazine

“Victor has the chops, the phrasing, the band and the courage to make contemporary music that references contemporary culture and materials that range from Carter to Berberian to Sun Ra to Hendrix. This is sheer, unadulterated brilliance. Buy it!”
- Nilan Perera, Exclaim.ca, Canada’s Music Authority

“What you hear on this album is raw and quirky and powerful and full of feeling and surprise and particularities that reflect universal human truths. One of the unique listening experiences of this or any other year.”
-Mike Chamberlain, Hour – Montreal’s weekly Entertainment magazine

“One of the most interesting voices to have emerged in recent years…always manages magically to be herself and to propose a music that looks forward cleverly mixing elements from past and present.”
-Mauritzio Comandini, All About Jazz: Italia

“WOW! Very impressive record…A splendid record from the very first listen.”
-François Couture, Monsieur Delire

Purchase The FreeSong Suite:

itunes
amazon.com
cdbaby.com

YEAR END KUDOS for The FreeSong Suite

>>The Village Voice Jazz Critics Poll 2009 – 4th in the Best Vocalist Category

http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-12-29/music/2009-voice-jazz-critics-poll-the-results

>>Jason Crane’s Top 10 of 2009 – The FreeSong Suite was Jason’s TOP Pick for the Year

http://thejazzsession.com/2009/12/08/my-top-10-jazz-cds-of-2009/

>>AllAboutJazz-NewYork’s Best of 2009 – Best Vocal Releases/January 2010 Issue

>>El Intruso’s International Critics’ and Musicians’ Polls 2009 – 1st place (tie) for Female Vocalist

http://www.elintruso.com/article.php?id=1785

>>PopMatters.com: The Best Jazz of 2009

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/117329-best-jazz-of-2009/

>>Laurence Donohue-Greene’s Top 10+ of 2009

http://www.jazzhouse.org/diary/2009/12/laurence-donohue-greenes-top-10-of-2009/

>>CKUT Jazz Director’s Top 20 list

http://jazzamuck.blogspot.com/2009/12/2009-top-20-jazz.html

>>Délire Actuel 2009 Demanding Music Top 30

http://blog.monsieurdelire.com/2009/12/le-top-30-des-musiques-exigeantes-2009.html

Cartwheels Through The Cosmos

ArtistShare 2007
50:58
8 Tracks

Leap Of Faith
Exchange Rate
Stray Dogs

Personnel:

Fay Victor-voice
Anders Nilsson-electric guitar
Ken Filiano-double bass, effects
Michael ‘TA’ Thompson-drums

Track Listing:

1          Leap of Faith
2          Exchange Rate
3          Its Coming
4          Spin
5          Pillow On My Ear
6          Along The Winding Way
7          Stray Dogs
8          Earth

View Lyrics for Cartwheels through the Cosmos HERE.

Press Quotes:

“It’s a borderless, cacophonous, in-your-face experiment in tone poetry and free-form expression. It’s tough.  It’s gutsy.  It’s brilliant.”
–Christopher Loudon, JazzTimes

“Complex, ambitious record…we can add Victor to the Betty Carter family of jazz singers, if we could find anyone else to fill out a family.” (A-)
–Tom Hull, Village Voice

“…actually stretches the definition of jazz vocals”
–JazzWise, UK

“Victor is the traffic director of a group methodology that surges into the interstellar regions of sound.”
–Glenn Astarita, New & Noteworthy Monthly Column, www.AllAboutJazz.com

“Taking jazz singing forward with a unique form of expression, Fay Victor delivers with authority. She reaches out with open arms to celebrate the freedom that comes with singing what you feel.”
–Jim Santella, Cadence

“CARTWHEELS THROUGH THE COSMOS is that rarity amongst contemporary vocal jazz releases: an album that doesn’t rely on a tired repertoire and looks, instead, for innovation in every corner. The beauty of Victor…is her blending of soulful delivery with avant-garde tactics. Her fearless exploration of a myriad of musical nexus points makes Cartwheels Through The Cosmos an album for those who normally stay away from vocal jazz.”
–John Kelman, AllAboutJazz.com

“I love it. It’s very special what you are doing. It’s a killer band and the whole concept is just fantastic!”
–Dave Douglas, Trumpeter

Purchase Cartwheels  ArtistShare at CDBaby and I-Tunes

Lazy Old Sun: LIVE/Life in the Lowlands

Listen:

People Are Strange
Stealaway
Nico

Greene Avenue Music 2004
64: 22
11 Tracks

Personnel:

Fay Victor-voice
Anton Goudsmit-electric guitar
Wolter Wierbos-trombone
Jacko Schoonderwoerd-double bass
Pieter Bast-drums

Track Listing:

1          Lazy Old Sun
2          People Are Strange
3          Laura
4          There They Are
5          Heading West-Way Out (Way Out West)
6          Stealaway
7          Magere Brug (Lean Bridge)
8          Nico
9          Keep It Busy, Keep It Moving (Saturday & Sunday)
10        Last Night I Had A Dream
11         BONUS

Press Quotes:

“…but a handful of albums by women including: Gunda Gottschalk’s Wassermonde, Satoko Fujii’s Illusion Suite, Susie Ibarra’s Folklorico and Fay Victor’s LAZY OLD SUN earned my unreserved admiration. The first and last in the list were particularly revelatory. Gottschalk’s skills on violin, exhibiting incredible incisiveness in a solitary recital setting, blew my mind. Victor’s European swan song with a crack Dutch combo in tow exposed a vocalist imbued with the best elements of past matriarchs like Abbey Lincoln and Betty Carter with an ear-tilted toward Euro-improv innovations.
-Derek Taylor, Dusted Magazine-The Year in Music Feature 2004

“A boldly inventive Betty Carter-Billie Holiday hybrid…the tremendously versatile Victor takes off into all sorts of curiously exciting directions…she’s a real find, a true original.”
-Christopher Louden, JazzTimes

LAZY OLD SUN puts a fresh new twist on jazz singing…her rich alto and perfect pitch allow the 4tet to play with the fringes of dissonance…it keeps hope alive that something fresh may still be coming for jazz singing.
-Phillip McNally, Cadence magazine

“Fay Victor is a gifted musician, possessed of flawless intonation, musical imagination, and inventive phrasing…this album deserves a first, a second, and a third listening.”
-William Grim, AllAboutJazz.com

“Sounds like a young Betty Carter with a bad case of wanderlust…a live set strong enough to win over all but the most anti-vocal jazz-fans…”
-Kurt Gottschalk, Signal to Noise

“…some intriguing vocalizing…invests every song with such emotional commitment that they all sound like her own originals even if they are an evergreen…the message from this session is clear—check out Fay Victor.”
-David Dupont, www.onefinalnote.com

Purchase Lazy Old Sun at Amazon.com and Cdbaby.com

Darker than Blue

Listen:

Zootoon
Strollin’
Sometimes

Timeless Records, BV
Released 2001
67:42
11 Tracks

Personnel:

Fay Victor-voice
Vijay Iyer-piano
Anton Goudsmit-electric guitar
Marc Mommaas-tenor saxophone
John Hebert-bass
Steve Hass-drums

Track Listing:

1          Eclipse
2          The Zootoon
3          Tonight (House Party Starting)
4          My Reverie
5          Strollin’ (Nostalgia in Times Square)
6          Last Night’s Dinner
7          Star Eyes
8          What A Little Moonlight Can Do
9          Sometimes
10         In The City (Sham Time)
11         Detour Ahead

Press Quotes:

“She applies freedom and improvisation and constantly attacks her songs from unexpected directions…This is a fine CD from a singer who takes chances.”
-Cadence Magazine

“The music is almost self-propelled, sporting a sharp efficiency (…) a certain economy that can only derive from practice and reference. Fay Victor is a thinking persons’ jazz vocalist.
-C. Michael Bailey, AllAboutJazz.com

Purchase Darker Than Blue at Timeless Records

In My Own Room

Listen:

Wave
Old Devil Moon
Every Time We Say Goodbye

Timeless Records, BV
Released 1998
57:47

Personnel:

Fay Victor – voice
Pere Soto – guitar
Marc Mommass – tenor saxophone
Jos Machtel – double bass
Marc Meader – drums
Walter Lampe – piano (track 11)
Hans Mantel – double bass (track 2 only)
John Engels – drums (track 2 only)

Track Listing:

1          All Blues
2          I Remember You
3          Ask Me Know
4          Wave
5          This Masquerade
6          Sister Sadie
7          All Of You
8          Skylark
9          Upside Down – Fleur De Lis
10        Old Devil Moon
11         Everytime We Say Goodbye

Press Quotes:

“4 and a half stars… She bends the lyrics, swings, sings ballads and the blues. Her delivery can be strong, sassy, smokey or sophisticated depending on the musical situation and the musical picture she wants to paint. Fay Victor has all the tools to be a major player in the jazz vocal scene.”
-Dave Nathan, All Music Guide

“Fay Victor emphasizing the lyrics as if she wrote them…identifies herself as a worthy addition to a legacy of fine jazz vocalists that are worth hearing.”
-Glenn Astarita, AllAboutJazz.com

“From Miles Davis’ “All Blues” until Cole Porter’s “Everytime We Say Goodbye”, Fay Victor effortlessly puts her own stamp on them…proves jazz is timeless…“
-Elegance Magazine, the Netherlands

Purchase in My Own Room at CD Baby and Timeless Records