Brienn Perry

Close your eves and listen.
He's Sammy. He's Frank. He's Tony and Nat.
More than that, he's right there, live.
Harvey native Brienn Perry, the classic jazz artist whose captivating vocals and mellow trombone quickly grab the attention of any audience, carries the essence of a great performer.
I finally heard Perry when he opened for the Bob Newhart show at Governors State University in September. Although Perry's name was familiar to me from rave reviews and local and downtown jazz listings, I hadn't heard him sing or play.
Lucky for me, that's changed.
He is one of the finest jazz and pop cover artist on stage today.
He executes each word carefully, but the lyrics and melodies seem to come from within, just rolling off his lips.
His controlled, rich voice is almost baritone-and very mellow..
..etc....

By Myra Eder

- The Star Tribune

"Although recorded "Live at FitzGerald's" in the Chicago suburb of Berwyn, singer Brienn Perry's date with the Woody Herman Orchestra has "Las Vegas showroom" written all over it. Perhaps that's Perry's next stop; he certainly has talent and personality to make a splash in the land of glitz and glitter. Have voice will travel? A strong voice too, with excellent range, but not as heavy as, say, Kevin Mahogany or the late Joe Williams. Perry knows how to sell a lyric, and is undoubtedly even more impressive in person than on record."

By Jack Bowers - all about JAZZ.com

Great jazz vocalist are in perilously short supply these days, particularly the male variety, which nearly has become extinct.
So when a technically polished, artistically astute male singer steps to the fore, there's cause to celebrate.
Precisely such a vocalist played Wednesday night at Green Dolphin Street, the tony supper club on North Ashland Avenue.
If there's any justice in the music world(and there probably isn't a lot to go around), Chicagoan Brienn Perry is going to build a large following.
Unlike any male jazz singer to have emerged in the past decade or more, Perry appears to have it all: impeccable pitch, propulsive sense of swing and enough soul to fill a room several times larger than the one he played Wednesday.
Though it would be accurate to term him a bass-baritone in the tradition of Johnny Hartman and Billy Eckstine, Perry's ample range takes him up to tenor territory with apparent ease. He has a surprising variety of vocal colors at his command, from a soft and gauzy tone he invokes in ballads to a brightly piercing, nearly operatic timbre he unleashes in certain climactic passages.
Lest all this vocal equipment sound overbearing, it's important to note that Perry wears his gifts lightly. Judging by his breezy, unassuming performance with the John Burnett Swing Orchestra, one sometimes had to wonder if he realizes that he towers over young male jazz singers of greater repute.
He opened his segment with a tune put on the map roughly six decades ago by Frank Sinatra, "All or Nothing at All." But Perry's version steered clear of Sinatra's various recordings part because he drew on blues-based vocal traditions stretching back to Big Joe Turner. The sound was huge, the approach earthy, the rhythmic momentum irresistible.
And that was simply the warm-up. By the time Perry swung into "Everyday I Have the Blues" (once Joe Williams' personal property), he reaffirmed that well-worn standards can be refreshed. Though Perry's performance revealed an intimate knowledge of the blues shouters of an earlier era, the singer made the piece his own with shrewdly chosen melodic embellishments and a remarkable emotional fervor.
In "Skylark," Perry did something one rarely encounters from jazz singers today: He sang slowly but without distending the original shape of Hoagy Carmichael's haunting melody.
As for Green Dolphin Street, the club has come a long way in the past couple of years. It's acoustics, which once seemed hopelessly flawed, have improved dramatically, thanks to major refurbishments to the music room.
Though the Burnett orchestra often roared, its sound never was harsh or distorted. Perry had more than enough lung power to counterbalance the instrumental forces behind him.
What Perry needs is an engagement in which he sings more than just a few familiar tunes in front of a big band, as he did on this occasion. The man deserves an entire evening built around him, and with any luck, he'll get it.

By Howard Reich
Tribune Arts Critic - The Chicago Tribune