Carol Welsman

The population of female jazz vocal artists has been growing faster over the past decade than a California wildfire. But with far more appealing results. And among the most appealing of all are the singing and piano playing of Carol Welsman. She may not be the best known blonde jazz singer from Canada - at least not yet. But when it comes to sheer talent, she doesn’t have to take second place to anyone.
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Welsman’s performance at Vibrato Grill… Jazz in Bel Air Tuesday night was a case in point. Despite the distractions of a somewhat talkier than usual crowd, her two sets were striking displays of creative versatility, reaching from blues and balladry to bossa nova, vocalese, and classic standards.

All of which provided a lot of choices from a musical table filled with appetizing dishes. One of Welsman’s current projects is an album of Peggy Lee classics, and she included a briskly swinging “Why Don’t You Do Right?” along with a darkly intimate rendering of “Black Coffee” capturing the full, caffeine-driven intensity of the song’s poignant tale.

Scat singing can be - for this listener - studies in boring, white key meandering. But Welsman, in “Just One of Those Things,” “Lady Be Good” and “Cottontail,” ripped off choruses - often in league with parallel piano clusters — with the harmonic accuracy and the ineffable swing of the instrumentalist that she is. And she dug into the vocalese of the latter two - especially Jon Hendrick’s tongue-twisting lyrics for “Cottontail” - with a fluency that belied the Byzantine difficulties of the lyrical/melodic lines.

The most satisfying entrees in Welsman’s musical feast, however, were the ballads, which, like the balance of the program, roved across time and style. Jimmy Webb’s “By the Time I Get To Phoenix,” for example, emerged as a stunning jazz ballad. Rodgers and Hart’s “Where Or When” revealed Welsman’s way with a lyric via phrasing that perfectly combined the story of the song with the flow of the music. And, in Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s touching “The Folks Who Live On the Hill,” she brought utter musical believability to that rarity - an American Songbook standard that’s not about unrequited love (and that also accomplishes the unlikely lyric feat of rhyming “veranda” with “command a”).

Despite a few audio problems throughout the night, Welsman was backed with swing, efficiency and total empathy by guitarist Pat Kelley, bassist Rene Camacho and drummer Jimmy Branley.

Call it a musical night to remember. But even so, leaving Vibrato’s elegant environs, I couldn’t help but wonder why - despite her long list of accomplishments - Welsman still hasn’t made the big breakthrough, still hasn’t reached the wide audience that her talent so obviously deserves. It’s time. And hopefully soon.
- The International Review of Music http://irom.wordpress.com

A seventh album for this singer’s singer, whose talent has been recognized by the Justin Time label, where she joins Diana Krall, Oliver Jones, Ranee Lee, Carmen Lundy, Sarah Vaughan, Charlie Biddle, David Clayton-Thomas and Susie Arioli. Indeed, Welsman has never sounded better: her voice and pianistic touch are at their most confident, so you know that she will more than measure up to such impressive company.
To mark her return to Canadian soil, Welsman has treated herself to a foray into Latin music. But rather than revisiting Spanish or South American tunes, she lays Latin rhythms on pieces that are closer to pop than to jazz, offering incursions in Brazil (Eu Vim de Bahia, by Gilberto Gil), Italy, France (Dans mon île, by Henri Salvador) and Spain, as well as Canada, with Dans cette chambre, Sylvie Dumontier’s adaptation of Gordon Lightfoot’s classic Beautiful.
Michel Truchon
- Le Soleil, 2007 Quebec, Camada

"Carol Welsman - A total eruption of exquisite lyrics, powerful grooves, and the effulgence of voice" - Jazz Monthly.com

Only a double-threat like Carol Welsman could follow an act like Patricia O'Callahan. Welsman was O'Calallaghan's opposite in many ways; her lower baritone range was smoky and sultry and perfect fort he jazz genre in which she performed.

She was also a dynamo on the baby grand, and could play unusual arrangements that turned country hits like Hey Good Lookin' and By The Time I Get To Phoenix into contemporary jazz songs.

She too brought her "best of" musicians, many of whom were Order of Canada recipients. Welsman's percussionist, Jimmy Branly, during "Just one of those things", played with amazing ambidexterity while performing one rhythm with a shaker, while soling one-handed on his drum kit.

Guest trumpeter, Guido Basso, proved his chops on "I want to be happy". Welsman, with Basso on harmonica, did a beautifully warm "Smile" that ws just stunning. Welsman called it an "embarrassment of riches" when she introduced her next guest musician, another Order of Canada recipient, Peter Appleyard, who just celebrated his 80th birthday... It was "Sweet Georgia Brown" where Appleyard really got to strut his stuff as he performed on vibraphone, then joining Welsman on piano, and finishing up on the drum kit, for lightening quick solo improvisation.

Welsman cleared the stage for one of my favorite numbers of the concert, 'A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square' that featured her unique arrangement for piano and Welsman's throaty voice.

- Welland Tribune, March 6, 2009

Quick Wits Along with 70s Hits For this engagement - his third at Feinstein's - Paul Williams was accompanied by a pop quartet and joined by Carol Welsman, a Canadian pop-jazz singer and pianist... as a singer she is more open-voiced with longer-lined phrasing. Especially in "Love Dance," the ballad of boudoir enchantment, her voice glistened. - New York Times