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Secret Life
Alternative Jazz is, I think, a new category I made up, just for this recording! A mix of world music, jazz, pop, and Americana…almost all are originals, except for “Save Your Love For Me” (remember Nancy Wilson and Cannonball? I changed it!) This project covered a transitional period of my life, and it is reflected in the songs. I used a jazz trio, some of my favorite people…Karen Hammack on piano, Chris Symer on bass, and Kendall Kay on drums...who added a great warmth to the music. Added a guitar on a few, some percussion, and lots of background vocals… mostly by me, Lou Castro (who produced the CD as well), Cheryl Barnes, and Alison Wedding. I love this project!
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Alone Together
A duo recording with pianist Phillip Strange. Interestingly enough, this recording and Heart To Heart were both recorded in the same week…I say interesting because these recordings couldn’t have been more different! Phil and I had just come home from a month tour in Japan. We recorded in Arizona, in an impeccable recording situation.. the sound is marvelous. We did modern arrangements of standards. Got kinda crazy on this one! My favorites on this recording is a sloooowwwwww version of “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was”, and a funky version of “Misty”!
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Heart to Heart
A duo recording with pianist Ross Tompkins. Ross was the pianist for the Doc Severinson Tonight Show band, but has endless recording and performing credits, rock to jazz. Truly a vocalist’s accompanist, this is a recording of all standards, with a special 50’s song dedicated to my sister, who passed in 1997. A mellow recording, easy on the ears, the style of this recording is what I call classic jazz. Some of my favorites… “That’s All”, “Eactly Like You”, “Melancholy Serenade”…
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Song of the Heart
The trio was gorgeous. On piano was my traveling and playing partner for many years, Phillip Strange. On bass, the admired acoustic player who was the last bassist with Bill Evans, and has played on many wonderful modern jazz recordings, Marc Johnson. On drums, one of the most desired modern jazz players today, who played with Weather Report and Stan Kenton, and has made many beautiful recordings under his own name and fellow fabulous modern jazz people, Peter Erskine. Recorded by Chick Corea’s personal engineer, Bernie Kirsh, at the Mad Hatter Studio, this band sounds great! Standards rearranged, several of my originals, including “Diane”, “Mr. Hall” and “The Story”, a few bass and vocal duets, and a few instrumentals. Voted “Best Of The Genre” on Internet’s Music Blvd.
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Point of View
This CD was my first. Some called it “New Age” because of the lyric content. Most all of the songs were originals that my first husband, Gus Garcia, and I wrote. The non-original was “When You Wish Upon A Star”. I had many musicians on this…for instance: Frank Severino, John Heard, Octavio Bailly, Bill Lohr, Armando Compean, Art Rodriguez, Tom Brechtlein, Wayne Johnson, Russell Ferrante, Jim Lacefield, Rick Helzer, Jim Cowger, Loren Pickford, Paul Yonemura, Clay Jenkins, Gary Willis, Scott Colley. Most of the arrangements, done by San Diego pianist Rick Helzer, were classic, absolutely beautiful.
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Day by Day
Looks like my duo's are getting highlighted! This is a lovely recording of myself and the ledgendary guitarist, Joe Diorio. Joe is an extraordinary guitarist...amazing ideas, flexibility, sense of timing...and a truly beautiful guy...I do adore this man! We made this recording in a small voice-over studio in Los Angeles, which was hardly a "normal" studio we would record in. Crowded with stuff, and probably we were the first musicians to do something like that there! I think because Joe and I share a similar aesthetic point of view, and we had a decent engineer (Diana Gunderson) we came out with a beautiful and musical product! Around 2005 Joe had a disabling stroke, and had the time and inclination to listen to his past projects. A year or two later he called me and said, "Hey Cath, I think we ought to put this one out. It's really pretty!" So, as life does things at the right time...my friend Christopher Perez came along suddenly, and excitedly became the executive producer and packaging artistic director...and very quickly, we had this beautiful CD in our hands!
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