“I love the way the blues lets you testify”, are the words of American jazz vocalist Karrin Allyson and on her last album In Blue she unravels every aspect of the blues. She uses the blues as a sovereign remedy for expressing her personal feelings, not only those of heartache or love, but she also sings about social issues. The singer passionately searches for tangent planes and evolves within the genre through extraordinary pieces by componists/musicians like Mose Allison, Joni Mitchell. George and Ira Gershwin and Bonnie Raitt. In Blue, certainly not a traditional blues CD based on fixed schemes, is her eight album released on Concord Records. Last year she made it into Billboard's Jazz top three, beyond expectation. Karrin Allyson's big break-through was with her last project - an ode to the music of John Cortland, shaped into ballads, inspired by Coltrane's '62 album Ballads. She merited respect for the way she knew how to mark these classical recordings with her own interpretations.
