Patricia Barber © Andrea Canter

Patricia Barber © Andrea Canter

A native of suburban Chicago who lived South Sioux City, Nebraska for much of her childhood, Barber was genetically predisposed 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 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), 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, an unheard-of achievement for a composer working in the general arena of popular songwriting. Live: A Fortnight in France, was released next in 2005, recorded over performances in three cities (La Rochelle, Metz, and Paris). “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."

On Mythologies, Barber augmented her quartet with tenor sax on several tracks and two tracks featuring guest vocalists, choir, and even a hip-hop segment. Eleven characters from Ovid inspired the 11 tracks, although Barber delved much further into the Greek literature and beyond to weave her own stories. Noted Jim Santella (All About Jazz), “The five-star program delivers a thousand images bound by progressive, enduring jazz wrappings.” [Click here for a Jazz Police review.]

And nothing beats a live performance, particularly at the Green Mill where Barber is prone to experiment with new ideas on her "home" stage. But any time she sits at the piano, Barber demonstrates her chops as a unique interpreter of songs as well as gifted composer, one who defies classification beyond the generic branding of “jazz musician.”

“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