Patricia Barber©Clay Patrick McBride

In a sea of vocal jazz talent, Chicago-based Patricia Barber floats to the top due to her imaginative, often witty original lyrics, her hauntingly beautiful melodies, and her daring, topsy-turvy renovations of standards and pop covers. Armed with a Guggenheim—one of few given to jazz artists and the first ever given to a songwriter—Barber created a cycle of songs from the unlikely source of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and the resulting Blue Note release, Mythologies, drew rave reviews as one of the top recordings of 2006; a new CD of reinventions of Cole Porter is do out this spring. With her working quartet of Neal Alger, Michael Arnopol and Eric Montzka, Barber will bring her sonic myths to the Dakota in downtown Minneapolis on June 18th.

A native of suburban Chicago, 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).

Patricia Barber©Andrea Canter

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 used the Fellowship to further explore composition, culminating in a nine-part song cycle that draws inspiration from Greek mythology, Ovid’s Metamorphosis. Wrote Howard Reich in the Chicago Tribune, “it pushes at the outskirts of widely accepted definitions of jazz, in that it encompasses a pop sensibility at one moment, classical expression the next and passages of hip-hop verse and triumphal choral writing, to boot.” 

It may seem odd that Patricia Barber is moving from Ovid to Cole Porter, with her Cole Porter Mix set to be released this summer on Blue Note. Yet she often has included a cover or two of Porter in her live shows, demonstrating that no tune, “standard” or mythical, is immune from her unorthodox, inventive interpretation.

Every time she takes the stage, 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.” And while it’s easy to define her as a vocalist, don’t be surprised if you find Patricia Barber to be one of the most innovative pianists you’ve heard in years. She’ll be at the Dakota for just one night, two sets, on June 18th.

“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 

Patricia Barber and her quartet perform at the Dakota in downtown Minneapolis (1010 Nicollet Mall) on June 18th; sets at 7 and 9:30 pm. Visit www.dakotacooks.com