2023 NOMINEE
Outstanding Jazz Album - Vocal
The new release presents original music along with a few diverse, yet familiar, jazz standards. The songs celebrate change and the catalytic agents that bring it about. Transformation, large and small, personal and collective, social and scientific, is the theme, with the alchemy of love explored though science and the cosmos. More
Aimée Allen’s latest release, Wings Uncaged features François Moutin, Billy Test, and Kush Abadey. With a set of striking originals, featuring winged creatures as metaphors for surviving peril, and daring arrangements of jazz standards, the album has met critical acclaim as Aimée's most innovative to date. Also includes a profound meditation on the current state of democracy, Democracy How (Harmony and Dissonance).
“Wings Uncaged is a vastly different experience than the standard vocal jazz fare that offers depth and reverence, while pushing the idiom forward. Allen will mesmerize you."
- Steph Cosme, stacotofy.com
Aimée's 2015 release Matter of Time features Romero Lubambo as special guest on selected tracks, with Toru Dodo, François Moutin, Jacob Melchior, and Scott Ritchie rounding out the quartet backing Aimée's rich vocals. Aimée’s talents as a composer and lyricist are matched by dynamic arrangements, and standards are given new life.
"Breathlessly breathtaking, Aimée's latest CD places her firmly amidst modern Jazz' finest vocalists and, especially, vocal composers." - Travis Rogers Jr.
Aimée’s third and latest CD, Winters & Mays is that rare combination of soulful, sensitive, and swinging. It is an eclectic collection of thoughtful original songs and reinterpretations of hand-picked gems, demonstrating the singer's versatility through jazz, bossa, blues, tango, even pop and poignant ballad.
Toru Dodo - piano
Pete McCann - guitar
Craig Akin - bass
Jacob Melchior - drums
Victor Prieto - accordion
The fruit of Aimée's trans-continental experiences in music and her talents as a writer, this album is a collection of warm, soulful, jazz-pop originals blending African rhythms, Brazilian bossa, and classic American jazz. With one exception, all the selections on l’Inexplicable were written by Aimée, and each is sung in French.
Richard Padron –guitar
Misha Piatigorsky –piano
Scott Richie –bass
Willard Dyson –drums
Kahlil Kwame Bell –percussion
Nioka Workman –cello
Gino Sitson –Udu
Aimée’s debut release offers inspired interpretations of jazz standards, familiar bossa nova classics and one original composition. In keeping with her worldly experience, Dream includes vocals in English, French, and Portuguese.
Toru Dodo - piano
Dave Cook - piano
Richard Padron- guitar
Ben Campbell - bass Brian Woodruff - drums