At just 23, jazz vocalist, pianist, and actor ISABELLA ISHERWOOD steps onto the national stage with THE SWEETEST SOUNDS, a debut album that reveals a mature artist with a strong command of lyrics, tone, and narrative. The album draws from the Great American Songbook, modern jazz repertoire, and select contemporary material, unified by Isherwood’s clear, warm alto and actor’s sensitivity to language. THE SWEETEST SOUNDS was produced by Champian Fulton, whose work as both pianist and vocalist has earned consistent recognition from the Jazz Journalists Association and DownBeat critics.
Despite her young age, Isherwood has already built a résumé that spans concert halls, festivals, and international touring. She has performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Symphony Hall and Ravinia, appeared at the Chicago Jazz Festival, and toured extensively throughout Europe. Parallel to her music career, she is also an accomplished actor and co-founder of a theater company, bringing a distinctly dramatic and textual awareness to her vocal interpretations.
While the repertoire ranges from buoyant swing to blues-tinged introspection, including a striking version of Amy Winehouse’s “Love Is a Losing Game,” the album never feels eclectic for its own sake. Instead, THE SWEETEST SOUNDS presents a cohesive artistic statement: a young artist using classic material to articulate a personal, contemporary voice.
With inventive arrangements, seasoned collaborators, and a vocalist who approaches every song as a dramatic role, THE SWEETEST SOUNDS marks the arrival of Isabella Isherwood as a serious new presence in jazz, one whose artistry extends beyond genre, geography, or age.
ONLINE
Website: ISABELLAISHERWOOD.COM
Facebook: FACEBOOK.COM/ISABELLAISHERWOODMUSIC
IG: @ISABELLA.ISHERWOOD
YouTube: YOUTUBE.COM/@ISABELLA.ISHERWOOD
TRACKS
1. Devil May Care 4:10
2. The Sweetest Sounds 4:34
3. Till There Was You 2:20
4. Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right 4:39
5. This Time The Dream’s On Me 4:08
6. My Buddy 4:43
7. The Song Is You 3:29
8. Time Heals Everything 4:11
9. Love Is A Losing Game 4:34
10. Teach Me Tonight 4:03
11. ‘Round Midnight 6:41
12. I Love Being Here With You 3:22
Recent Reviews:
“Her debut recording establishes Isherwood as a major interpreter of the American Songbook. With each track, she caresses a familiar composition and discovers aspects of it that amplify its emotional resonance. She takes a love song and infuses it with all the depth of a highly personal dramatic monologue. It is a remarkable gift for such a young artist.”
-Parcbench by Greg Victor
“An impressive debut… Isherwood demonstrates a deep understanding of the lyrics that she sings and her voice is a perfect vehicle for her to present each song… Isherwood has given her listeners a hip introduction to her talents.”
-Jersey Jazz by Joe Lang
“Versatile, emotionally intuitive Chicago based jazz vocalist Isabella Isherwood’s infectiously soulful and witty debut album The Sweetest Sounds reveals a young artist deeply attuned to the storytelling heart of jazz tradition. Drawing subtle fire and thoughtful inspiration from the Great American Songbook awhile incorporating cleverly seductive re-imaginings of classics by Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse, she approaches her repertoire not simply as stellar tunes to interpret but as miniature dramatic scenes to inhabit. Isabella’s background as a classical pianist and accomplished actor and theatre director informs her striking approach to these musical narratives. She crafts performances that feel all at once intimate, conversational and musically adventurous.”
-JW Vibe by Jonathan Widran
“Chicago-based Isabella Isherwood’s debut album is an often intriguing, introspective set… Most magnetic of all is a mournful version of “My Buddy,” which is just piano and voice. Each line feels burdened, believable and aching. This deep interpretation of the outwardly simple 104-year-old ballad about missing someone is not to be missed.”
-Sound Advice/Talkin’ Broadway by Rob Lester
“On her debut album, The Sweetest Sounds, vocalist and pianist Isabella Isherwood delivers a poised and intimate work with a warm conversational style and tone, allowing her natural warmth to carry these timeless songs with confidence and charm… a wonderful introduction to a very talented new voice.”
-The Jazz Page by D. Glenn Daniels
Liner Notes by Neil Tesser
I first met her at Chicago’s renowned Jazz Showcase. She wasn’t onstage; I didn’t know anything about her, but she recognized me. (I’ve been a writer and broadcaster in town for more than 50 years — roughly twice as long as she’s been on Earth.) And in situations like that, I like to find out more about the person who seems glad to have met me. So I ask questions.
“I’m a singer,” said Isabella Isherwood. OK; that alone takes work. But then she told me she’d recently been quite busy as a Jeff Awards-nominated music director and conductor for local theater productions; she’d started doing that high school. This struck me as rather accomplished for a young vocalist — even one as poised and enthusiastic as this one.
In short order I learned that she also writes arrangements for those theater gigs; that she’s performed as a jazz pianist, leading a trio; that she had plans for an album (this one); that she’s done a fair amount of acting, sometimes with the small theater company she co-founded . . . .
At that point, thinking about her calendar left me exhausted. (I didn’t find out till later that she is also a scuba instructor and that she surfs, skis, and dances salsa, and then I got fatigued all over again.) But she is indeed a singer: on this, her debut, her range includes those thrilling low notes, a middle register that resonates the warmth of mulled wine, and ghostly obbligatos to enhance an arrangement — and that’s all within the first track.
The songs she’s chosen roam the landscape, too: finding Richard Rodgers and Meredith Willson, Thelonious Monk and Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse all clustered together in the green room suggests a highly literate fever dream. “They’re all songs that resonate with me,” she notes. “The title song is the connective tissue. These songs are not about finding love, per se; they’re about the creative act of getting these sweetest sounds into the world.”
And yet, for all these composers’ combined talent, Isabella’s love of theater weighs equally on her choices. “As an actor and as a reader, I come at these from a language perspective. I look at these songs as text first, and then craft an arrangement to make that pop.” Whence comes her ability to lift a song from its comfort zone and refresh it for a new day. “Devil May Care” usually romps in at a sizzling 4/4 beat; Isabella shifts it to a gently rolling 5/4 lope, slows the tempo, softens the attack — and in doing so, swaps its trademark braggadocio for a confident wisdom. The title track usually plays as a poignant prayer, even at quick tempos; Isabella’s languid phrasing turns it into a seductive invitation. “This Time’s the Dream’s on Me” has been a rather peppy song of not-yet-requited love since it arrived in the Swing Era; replace the pep with waltz-time arpeggios, add an angelic chorus as a pop background, and the resigned yearning reveals an oft-missed vulnerability.
Isabella’s working band comprises a couple of jazz mainstays and respected leaders on their own groups in the creative virtuosi Mike Allemana and Joe Policastro, as well as her contemporary Alejandro Salazar, a friend and collaborator since their mid-teens. She loves this band — wouldn’t you? — and shows it by enlisting each of them on a well-chosen duo track. Backed by only guitar, she becomes a 40s torch singer on the haunting heartbreak “Time Heals Everything” (although the song comes from the 70s). On “’Round Midnight,” the solitary bass frames her chalumeau middle range. Most surprising is the voice-drums duet with Salazar, as the two goad each other into adventurous spirals.
And don’t forget the remaining duet with the album’s remaining instrumentalist, Isabella herself on piano. “My Buddy” strode off from Tin Pan Alley in 1922. It’s old-school corny, and yet in our atmosphere of deep fakes and broken trust, her unadorned reading cuts the fog like a quavering beacon.
But remember: it’s a first album. Isabella Isherwood has just begun to share herself with the world, and there’s plenty more to come. I get tired — but exhilarated! — just thinking about it.
NEIL TESSER
