Unraveled marks this consummate jazz vocalist’s arrival as a composer, arranger, and bandleader with a captivating vision of her own. On this ten-track collection of original compositions along with newly arranged gems, Aubrey Johnson is joined by a group of stellar musicians who accompanied her recording journey:  pianist Chris Ziemba, drummer Jeremy Noller, and bassist Matt Aronoff. Adding striking orchestral textures are Tomoko Omura on violin and Michael Sachs on bass clarinet and alto sax. Brazilian jazz musician Vitor Gonçalves adds masterly accordion work on two tracks. Production credit goes to bassist Steve Rodby of the Pat Metheny Group. Although Johnson arranged every piece on the recording, she credits her bandmates — who first collaborated as a group in 2014 — with shaping the music over the course of dozens of gigs, particularly regular performances at NYC’s Cornelia Street Café. Unraveled tells the story of an artist and her band coming together and forging a fresh, distinctive sound unlike that of any other ensemble on the scene. 

  • Over the past decade, Johnson has joined an exclusive coterie of brilliant singers and collaborated with a dazzling array of New York City’s most creative and adventurous artists. Equally adept at delivering wordless melodic lines like a virtuoso horn player and interpreting profound lyrics with emotional acuity, she often performs with intrepid vocalist peers including Portuguese-born Sara Serpa, Argentinian Sofia Rei, and LA native Michael Mayo, a rising star. She has also contributed to acclaimed recordings by the Andrew Rathbun Large Ensemble, Brian Carpenter’s Ghost Train Orchestra, Joe Phillips’ Numinous Ensemble, pianist Jason Yeager, and the inimitable Bobby McFerrin, on his 2010 Grammy-nominated VOCAbuLaries.

    Unraveled opens with the Johnson-arranged jazz/pop excursion “No More ‘I Love You’s’,” a 1995 hit for Annie Lennox originally written and recorded by the 1980s English duo The Lover Speaks (aka David Freeman and Joseph Hughes). Johnson’s composition, the heartrending ballad “Love Again” revels in vulnerability, with a melody that rises as the emotional stakes peak. Set to a seductively slinky groove played with percussive precision by Noller, the title track, another of Aubrey’s own compositions, combines a spritely, eminently danceable melody with a poignant portrait of mounting inner angst. Jimmy Rowles’ “The Peacocks” — a tune also known as “A Timeless Place” after vocalist Norma Winstone added her own lyrics — is delivered with impressive poise, control and range, allowing Johnson to make the piece truly her own. Antonio Carlos Jobim’s bossa nova standard “Dindi” is performed here hauntingly in its original Portuguese. The languorous, Johnson-composed “Lie In Wait” captures the nagging inner monologue inspired by a prolonged separation in a romantic relationship. 

    Altogether,  the album serves as an ideal showcase for Johnson’s impressive songwriting talents, yet it also includes two songs by her esteemed album collaborators. Saxophonist Michael Sachs composed and arranged the sumptuously detailed and pop-influenced “Happy to Stay” — an exquisite melody buoyed by Tomoko Omura’s insistent pizzicato pulse. Omura, knowing Johnson’s affinity for Brazilian music, also composed and arranged the innovative samba “Voice Is Magic,” adding the additional challenge of including a lyric in Japanese. Then there is “These Days,” Johnson’s captivating art song setting for a verse written by her brother, Gentry Johnson.

    Johnson’s abiding passion for the treasure-laden Brazilian songbook injects another jolt of creative energy into the album’s concluding tracks. She offers a bravura wordless romp through Egberto Gismonti’s “Karate,” playing tag with Vitor Gonçalves’ playful accordion and Chris Ziemba‘s piano “on the least ‘arranged’ track on the record,” says Johnson. “I’ve always had a penchant for singing wordless vocal melodies and a habit of trying to find melodies that seem impossible to sing.”  

    As an undergrad at Western Michigan University, Johnson studied classical and jazz voice and joined Gold Company, the university’s world-renowned vocal jazz ensemble. A standout performer, she won two DownBeat Collegiate Student Music Awards for “Best Jazz Vocalist” and “Jazz Vocalist, Outstanding Performance.” She made her auspicious recording debut in 2007’s Essence of Green (Origin Records) by pianist Ron DiSalvio and legendary drummer Jimmy Cobb. Western is also where she first connected with piano master Fred Hersch, “a great influence and mentor and friend,” she says. On Hersch’s advice, the Green Bay, Wisconsin native began her NEC master’s degree in jazz performance in 2007, during which she studied with Danilo Perez, Jerry Bergonzi, Dominique Eade, Allan Chase, George Garzone, and Frank Carlberg. Graduating with honors, she was awarded the Gunther Schuller Medal for “making an extraordinary contribution to the life of the school,” and won her third DownBeat Magazine Collegiate Student Music Award, for outstanding performance in jazz voice.

    It was during her college years that she also forged a deep musical connection with her uncle, Lyle Mays, the pianist and composer who gained fame with the Pat Metheny Group. In 2009 and 2010, she contributed wordless vocals and auxiliary keyboards for Mays, including concerts at the Zeltsman Marimba Festival and the Gilmore Keyboard Festival, where she performed several world premieres of pieces written with her unique voice in mind. By the time she made the move to New York City in 2011, Johnson had recorded with Bobby McFerrin on his Grammy-nominated album VOCAbuLaries (EmArcy). While commuting to Boston to teach at Berklee, where she remains a member of the faculty, she quickly became known as an essential new voice on the scene, performing with a daunting array of artists and ensembles, including Fred Hersch’s Pocket Orchestra, Sara Serpa’s City Fragments, John Zorn’s Mycale Vocal Quartet, Joe Phillips’ Numinous Ensemble, Andrew Rathbun’s Large Ensemble, Rose and the Nightingale, and Travis Sullivan’s Bjorkestra. A dedicated educator who has given master classes and workshops around the world, Johnson is also on the faculty at Queens College in New York.

    The seeds for her band were sown in Boston, where she met violinist Tomoko Omura in the Guy Mendilow Ensemble, a world folk combo, and they bonded instantly over their commitment to jazz. Omura’s incomparable skills as an improviser continue to provide inspiration for Johnson’s writing and arranging. Reed expert Michael Sachs was part of her circle of friends at NEC, with whom she reconnected in New York City. She first encountered Ziemba, Noller, and Aronoff on a session to which she brought several original pieces, “and they sounded so great that I ended up using them on my first gig as a leader in New York,” Johnson says. The group gained so much attention through a series of performances at Cornelia Street Café, Shapeshifter Lab, the Kitano, Zinc Bar, and the Cell Theatre that she didn’t think twice about using the same cast on her debut album.

  • DOWNBEAT
    During the past decade, vocalist Aubrey Johnson has explored different chambers of her artistry and performed with an array of musicians, including singers Bobby McFerrin and Sara Serpa, as well as Brian Carpenter’s Ghost Train Orchestra. Johnson’s leader debut, Unraveled (Outside In)—a program featuring original compositions and new sextet arrangements of standards—takes listeners on a dramatic journey through her intriguing aesthetic. Read this feature here.
    - STEPHANIE JONES

    JAZZ HISTORY ONLINE
    "That music may reside in a middle area situated between singer/songwriter pop and contemporary jazz, but regardless of the material’s source, the musicians—including Johnson—are working within the jazz idiom, reacting to each other and improvising on the chord changes... she is developing ideas which expand our definition of jazz and reflect the inclusive nature of the art form." Read the full review here.
    - THOMAS CUNNIFFE

    MUSICAL MEMOIRS
    "This is an album of fresh, innovative music by a singer whose voice defies category and who reinvents herself on each individual tune. Her distinctive sound is unlike one I have heard in other ensembles or on the recent jazz scene." Full review here. 
    - DEE DEE MCNEIL

    THE WHOLE NOTE
    "There is so much to recommend here. One could not ask for a better debut." Full review here.
    - BARRY LIVINGSTON

  • No More ‘I Love You’s

    Love Again

    Unraveled

    Happy To Stay

    Lie in Wait

    Voice is Magic

    The Peacocks

    Dindi

    These Days

    Karate

When the musical partnership between a vocalist and a pianist rises to the level of equal collaboration, something truly special can occur. This rarefied relationship has produced some of the great duos in jazz—Billie Holiday and Teddy Wilson; Norma Winstone and John Taylor, Bill Evans and Tony Bennett, Ran Blake and Jeanne Lee, and more recently Kurt Elling and Laurence Hobgood. Aubrey Johnson and Randy Ingram share this special collaborative partnership, as documented on their beautiful new recording Play Favorites, on Sunnyside Records.

  • Upon arriving in New York after his graduation from the New England Conservatory, Ingram found work and gained experience working with vocalists, honing his skills as an accompanist and arranger. As his career developed, Randy’s focus shifted to his work as a composer and bandleader, recording three critically acclaimed records for Sunnyside (Sky/Lift, 2014, The Wandering, 2017, and The Means of Response, 2019) and touring worldwide with his trio and in duo settings with bassists Drew Gress and Matt Brewer.

    Johnson, a fellow NEC graduate and New York transplant, is known for her uncanny ability to seamlessly navigate complicated melodies and improvisations, as well as to deliver a lyric with gorgeous expressivity. Among the 40+ albums Aubrey has contributed to as a side-person are Bobby McFerrin’s Grammy-nominated VOCAbuLaries and Lyle Mays’ Grammy Award-winning Eberhard. Her debut recording, Unraveled, which features her compositions and arrangements was released on Outside In Music in 2020.

    Johnson and Ingram met in 2015 while serving on faculty at a jazz camp near the Catskills in upstate New York. The two were paired at a faculty recital and were instantly impressed with one another, quickly discovering that they shared an uncommon level of musical comfort, support, and respect. They developed a great friendship and began to pursue regular performances as a duo. Early on they found that their duo was an ideal setting to explore interpretations of their favorite songs, and a welcome alternative to their roles as composers and leaders of their respective bands. Over time, they gathered selections from their mutual interest in the Great American Songbook, jazz compositions, popular music, and the music of Brazil. Johnson’s experience singing a wide variety of genres, and her detailed study of Portuguese helped to ensure the two had a wide range of repertoire from which to choose, while their experience as composers helped to create unique arrangements and reworkings of music they loved.

    Preparation for the recording of Play Favorites amplified their search for material, as the two met for frequent listening sessions to audition music that was meaningful to them from a broad variety of genres. Eventually they settled upon a collection of songs they would take to Big Orange Sheep studios in Brooklyn at the end of May 2022, with Michael Perez-Cisneros as their trusted engineer. Produced by Ingram and Johnson, Play Favorites is masterfully mixed and mastered by grammy winner Rich Breen.

    Play Favorites begins with Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell’s “My Future”, which Johnson had fallen in love with through her students at Berklee College of Music. The song’s message of empowerment and self love resonated with the duo and inspired a creative adaptation of the pop song to a jazz format, amplified by Ingram’s revamped set of colorful harmonies. Lerner and Loewe’s “If Ever I Would Leave You” had long been a favorite of both Ingram and Johnson, and here their reading is adventurous, inspired by Sonny Rollins’ interpretation from his 1962 recording “What’s New”. Johnson shows her ability and comfort in not only delivering a lyric but also creating beautiful and captivating melodies while improvising.

    Ingram’s haunting and meditative “Prelude”, the only original composition on the album, is an homage to the collaborations between John Taylor and Norma Winstone. Johnson’s ethereal wordless vocal sets up the ideal mood for the duo’s interpretation of Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin’s “If I Should Lose You”, reborn in their expanded, double time arrangement that heightens the song’s poignancy and lyrical emotion.

    Johnson and Ingram’s mutual affection for Joni Mitchell led them to “Conversation”, the songwriter’s fantastic tune about being attracted to someone already in a relationship, from her beloved 1970 release Ladies of the Canyon. Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Olha Maria” is presented in a sort of suite with Jimmy Webb’s bittersweet “Didn’t We”, linked by a beautiful and heartbreaking free-form solo by Ingram. Another Jobim classic “Chovendo Na Roseira” is a piece the two each knew and loved. Their open, rhythmic version takes cues from an arrangement by Luciana Souza, and provides ample space for Ingram to showcase his improvisational skills.

    The duo pays homage to Johnson’s late uncle and mentor Lyle Mays with a version of his beloved “Close To Home” that features seldom-heard Portuguese lyrics under the title “Quem é Você”. Johnson’s and Ingram’s stripped-down performance is heartfelt and spontaneous while maintaining Mays’ original intent.

    Lennie Tristano’s “April” (a contrafact based upon the standard “I’ll Remember April”) had long been a favorite of Ingram’s since discovering it on a formative Lee Konitz recording. Knowing Johnson loved to sing “I’ll Remember April”, and that she would be able to deliver the challenging line with aplomb, he suggested the duo work on ways to pair the pieces, eventually coming up with a playfully complex arrangement with many key changes.

    Robert Wells and Mel Torme’s “Born To Be Blue” gets reworked into a moody but sophisticated blues inspired by John Coltrane, as well as the vocalist Helen Merrill. Toninho Horta’s “Bons Amigos” is radiant and embodies much of what the pair adore about Brazilian music—lilting melodies, colorful harmonies, and poignant lyrics. The recording concludes with Chase, Whiting, and Robin’s “My Ideal”, one of the duo’s stalwart tunes that they reworked into a lilting waltz.

    Play Favorites is a gorgeous portrait of Aubrey Johnson and Randy Ingram’s deep and unique musical partnership. In challenging themselves to scale back from their usual roles as composers and bandleaders they’ve created a record that is resonant, distinctive, and profoundly honest.

  • NEW YORK CITY JAZZ RECORD
    "Sometimes two people just click." Read the full review in the November 2022 issue here.
    - DAN BILAWSKY

    JAZZTIMES
    "The brightest thread running through the project is their deep love of the Brazilian Songbook." Read the review here.
    - ANDREW GILBERT

    ALL ABOUT JAZZ
    ”Aubrey Johnson and Randy Ingram each have successful musical careers on their own, but their work together on this album is formidable. The gauzy warmth of Johnson's voice and the bright sparkle of Ingram's piano make a wonderful team." Read the 4-star review here.
    - JEROME WILSON

    TAKE EFFECT REVIEWS
    "Much like the legendary duos of Billie Holiday and Teddy Wilson, and Bill Evans and Tony Bennett, Johnson and Ingram illuminate the Great American Songbook with much charm, sophistication and timelessness." Full review here.
    - TOM HAUGEN

  • My Future

    If Ever I Would Leave You

    Prelude

    If I Should Lose You

    Conversation

    Olha Maria

    Didn’t We

    Chovendo Na Roseira

    Quem E Voce

    I’ll Remember April

    Born To Be Blue

    Bons Amigos

    My Ideal

LYLE MAYS (featuring AUBREY JOHNSON)
2021 GRAMMY AWARD WINNER - BEST INSTRUMENTAL COMPOSITION

Eberhard is a long-form, multi-section work that is Lyle’s self-professed dedication to the great German bass player Eberhard Weber, a composer whose influence loomed large on Mays and his long-time collaborator Pat Metheny in the forming of the 11-time Grammy-Award winning Pat Metheny Group during the mid 70’s and throughout their careers. According to Steve Rodby (bass player of the Pat Metheny Group and Lyle’s best friend) who did double duty on this recording as co-associate producer and acoustic bassist, “…though he called it his ‘humble tribute’ to Eberhard, it is still 100 percent Lyle in every way.” 

  • A steady, lilting marimba (Wade Culbreath) ostinato offers an ample bed for Eberhard’s ethereal opening piano melody, performed, of course, by Mays. Lyle’s unmistakeable orchestrational style is immediately on display as various shakers, rainsticks, and atmospheric synthesizer pads quietly make their way into the texture, rising and falling organically as an electric bass theme (played by longtime James Taylor cohort, Jimmy Johnson) emerges. Wordless vocals, a hallmark of the music of the Pat Metheny Group, supplied here by jazz singers Aubrey Johnson (Lyle’s niece and co-executive producer), Rosana Eckert, and Gary Eckert, are introduced—first as accompaniment to the bass melody and later as melodic “instruments.” 

    Vocal features give way to Bob Sheppard’s woodwind section, which gives way to cello section underscores (led by principal Timothy Loo), and soon the whole ensemble, including star drummer/percussionists Jimmy Branly and Alex Acuña, Steve Rodby (acoustic bass), Mitchel Forman (Hammond B3 Organ/Wurlitzer piano), and Bill Frisell (guitar) have made appearances. All sixteen instrumentalists/vocalists rarely play at the same time, instead playfully weaving in and out for various features (notably by Mays, Jimmy Johnson, Aubrey Johnson, and Culbreath) and accompanying textures. In a piece already abundant with aural decadence, Bob Sheppard’s extended tenor saxophone solo, which brings Eberhard to its climax, is perhaps the most thrilling. The piece ends as it began, with a sparse recapitulation of the introduction, rewarding the listener with the feeling of having experienced an incredible musical odyssey.

    In typical Lyle fashion, this music reflects and honors his far-reaching influences, most obviously the bass playing and compositional style of Eberhard Weber (with whom Lyle recorded on two occasions), but continuing on through Philip Glass’ minimalism, Indonesian Gamelan ensemble, Brazilian music (notably the percussive and speech-like vocal techniques of Lyle’s friend and collaborator Naná Vasconcelos), to the blues, and to classical forms and structures. As in all of his compositions, Mays’ propensity for exploiting compositional material (or, its “DNA”) to the fullest extent is ever constant throughout Eberhard. Like a scientist, he would take a simple melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, or other kind of idea and experiment with it until he had discovered all of the different forms it could take—melody, counterline, background pad, bassline, rhythmic motif, and more—often using the same ideas in a wide variety of ways. Eberhard is utterly intentional, containing layer upon layer of depth, complexity, love, and care for the listener to discover. 

    While technically a posthumous release, Mays was engaged in the making of Eberhard from beginning to end—serving as composer, arranger, performer (piano, keyboards, and synthesizers), producer, and executive producer, and was actively involved in all of the recording and mixing sessions, which took place in Los Angeles during the latter half of 2019.

    Fans will know that Lyle had been on hiatus from his enormously successful touring and recording career with the Pat Metheny Group and as a solo artist  (Eberhard will be his seventh release as a leader) since 2011, choosing instead to pursue his myriad non-musical passions. Then, “Lyle’s health took a bad turn in 2019, and at about the same time, he decided to try to get Eberhard recorded.The relationship between those two events is complex. What’s clear is that he would continue writing and extending this music, as was always his process: to try to find every bit of what the material suggested, every note and harmony, and sound it evoked for him. He added parts, expanded orchestration, imagining it all on an even grander scale,” Steve Rodby explains. “The result is this recording, and what he was able to hear in his final days. This wasn’t meant to be Lyle’s last piece of music, and if he had lived longer, he had plans for more.”

  • ALL ABOUT JAZZ
    ”Musical tour de force" is a phrase often overused and abused, but it seems like the best and only way to succinctly summarize Eberhard. Read this feature here.
    - JOHN KELMAN

    THE BIG TAKE OVER
    ”The efforts of this mini-orchestra result in a thirteen-minute suite that encapsulates Mays’ vision throughout his career: melodic, verdant, bordering on sentimental, but with drops of acid hidden in the corners – attributes shared by its titular subject as well. It’s an undiluted look into the creative mind of one of the last few decades’ most influential keyboardists.”
    - MICHAEL TOLAND

    JAZZ WEEKLY
    ”The music itself is a soft panoramic pastel, opening with a soft marimba, leaning towards ambience before a vocal chant enters. Sheppard’s tenor and Frisell’s guitar ride a dramatic wave that eventually releases into a foamy fade of a wave returning to the ocean.”
    - GEORGE W. HARRIS

    JAZZIZ
    ”Mays’ swan song is a thoughtfully constructed, joyfully executed paean to a prodigiously talented, creative force in European contemporary music.”
    - BILL MILKOWSKI

  • Eberhard