Photo by Andrea Canter

A consistent winner of Downbeat's "Talent Deserving Wider Recognition," Barber's 2004 release, Live: A Fortnight in France (Blue Note), has garnered the raves that might make that crown obsolete. Noted Time, "Cross Diana Krall with Susan Sontag, and you get Patricia Barber, whose throaty, come-hither vocals and coolly incisive piano are displayed to devastating effect." But this is hardly sudden, as Barber has been producing some of the most creative music in jazz for over a decade. Don't miss her shows this month at her home base in Chicago, The Green Mill (February 13 and 20).

A native of suburban Chicago, Barber was genetically predispositioned to follow the jazz life; her father, Floyd "Shim" Barber, played sax with Glen Miller. Studying psychology and classical music at the University of Iowa, she switched to jazz, later moving back to Chicago and literally launching her career in 1984 with a standing engagement (5 nights per week) at the famed Gold Star Sardine Bar. Her compositions as well as her performance chops proved popular, and in 1994, she moved her work to the epicenter of Chicago jazz, the Green Mill, where she still has a regular, and very popular, gig when not on tour. Wrote Chicago Magazine, in voting her "Best Torch Singer" in 1999, "You've got to love a singer who can deliver Paul Anka ("She's a Lady"), Jim Morrison ("Light My Fire"), and e.e. cummings ("Love, Put on Your Faces") in a single set... a songwriter who gets Pierre Boulez, Bill Gates, and Karl Marx into the same smart lyric and still manages to give it a sexy groove."

After recording Split for Floyd Records in 1989, Barber's major label debut, A Distortion of Love, was released by Antilles in 1992. However, it was Café Blue (Blue Note/Premonition) that became a hit two years later, introducing listeners to her trademark dark and haunting contralto and "hip" intellectual stage presence; this was also the first of several recordings that Barber would produce herself. Following Café Blue, Barber was named "Female Vocalist/Talent Deserving Wider Recognition" (for the first time) in the 1995 Down Beat International Critics Poll. Staying with Blue Note /Premonition, she went on to release Modern Cool (1998), followed by an abbreviated live date, Companion (1999), Night Club (2000), a set of reinterpretations of jazz standards, and then a set of all original material on the highly acclaimed Verse (2002). "Verse is about songwriting," says Barber, "and about trying to create new material within both a narrow and broad construction of what vocal jazz is now. I have been diligent about trying to learn from, absorb, and acknowledge the great American songwriters whose songs have been appropriated as repertoire by the jazz masters... I was hearing the songs in my head had more to do with the guitar than the piano. In a loose way, Verse is a Patricia Barber homage to Joni Mitchell."

In 2003, Barber was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in the category of Music Composition, a rare achievement for a composer working in the general arena of popular songwriting. Barber has used the Fellowship to further explore composition, culminating in a nine-part song cycle that draws inspiration from Greek mythology, Ovid's Metamorphosis. The first song from that cycle, "Whiteworld," appears on the new recording and, along with others, has been part of recent live performances around the world, including her January 2005 gig at the Dakota.

Patricia Barber's recent release, Live: A Fortnight in France, was recorded over performances in three cities (La Rochelle, Metz, and Paris) and features her current working quartet of Michael Arnopol on bass, Eric Montzka on drums, and Neil Alger on guitar. "This recording is a concert," says Barber. "What you hear is what we play at the Green Mill on any given night." Regarding her quartet, she said, "We trust each other so much that the improvisation has become quite adventurous. It's so valuable keeping a band intact, like Keith Jarrett, Brad Mehldau, and Pat Metheny do."

Photo by Andrea Canter

Photo by Andrea Canter

Patricia Barber and her quartet provided one of the most dramatic and thoughtful performances of the year when they played at the Dakota in Minneapolis last January. Back at the Dakota a month ago, competing with herself for the local gig of the year, Barber again demonstrated her chops as a unique interpreter of songs as well as gifted composer, one who defies classification beyond the generic branding of "jazz musician." Of course, home in Chicago at the Green Mill, Barbers' virtuosity is almost a weekly phenomenon, not only as a vocalist, but as one of the most uniquely engaging pianists around.

"Indeed, in an age when pipsqueak voices and easy-listening sensibilities routinely draw critical praise and commercial success, Barber has emerged as the anti-diva: a singer uninterested in assuming the usual romantic poses, a songwriter unwilling to pen cloyingly sweet love songs, a pianist who actually has something distinctive to say at the keyboard." --Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune

The Patricia Barber Quartet will perform at the Green Mill on February 13 and 20. The Green Mill is located at 4802 N. Broadway; visit www.greenmilljazz.com