Jazz vocalist Rebecca Hardiman has been making music since the late ’80s, but she’s “not nearly as well known as she should be,” says engineer Gene Forte of Blue Heron Studio, where Hardiman recorded her impending Collections: Volume 1. Due out Friday, April 26, Hardiman’s sixth album features some of her all-time favorite songs, including “Too Marvelous For Words,” “Moon River” and “You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To,” which is the March installment of Vortex’s Our City, Our Sounds: A #PDXmusic Song A Month.
“I’ve always enjoyed the melody and words to this jazz standard,” Hardiman says of the song, “but turning it into an arrangement that included a Latin rhythm and a featured drum solo made it all the more fun. I also enjoyed scatting with the Latin rhythm going on.”
Joined in the studio by Ray Hardiman on keys, bassist Whitney Moulton, drummer Kurt Deutscher, and Laird Halling on saxophone, clarinet and flute, “As we were mixing and mastering the song, we decided to increase the volume on the drum fade-out at the end, and create another drum solo as the song ends—because frankly, Kurt Deutscher is one of the best drummers in the Portland area, and we wanted to show that off a bit. We’ve been performing and recording with Kurt since the early 1990s!”
“This Collections: Volume 1 will lead to Volume 2 later this year,” Hardiman reveals. “Everyone on this recording is top-shelf and have had many years experience playing, improvising, writing, teaching and recording.”
