Song Yi Jeon, Vinicius Gomes - Home (2022) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

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Song Yi Jeon, Vinicius Gomes - Home (2022) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

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A collaboration between vocalist Song Yi Jeon and guitarist Vinicius Gomes, 2022's Home showcases the duo's gorgeously enveloping blend of Brazilian, classical, and ECM-style jazz. Born in South Korea, Jeon has made her home in Switzerland for much of her career. That's where she first met the Brazilian-born, New York-based Gomes while both were members of Wolfgang Muthspiel's Focusyear ensemble in 2018. Together, they struck up a creative partnership, communing over their shared love for artful and intimately rendered chamber jazz. With her pristine tone and agile sense of harmony, Jeon is known for her distinctive, wordless vocal style, a sound often more akin to an instrumentalist than a singer. It's a sound that evokes the work of icons like Ella Fitzgerald and Norma Winstone, one that makes her as much of a collaborative improviser as Gomes. Similarly, Gomes has a fluid style that finds him bridging traditional Brazilian sounds, classical, and more far-reaching contemporary jazz idioms. Think Ralph Towner crossed with Carlos Barbosa-Liam and you'll get a sense of the guitarist's broad virtuosity. The duo combine all of their passions here, often blurring the genre lines. They also move freely between songs that have a more compositional sound and ones built largely around improvisation. Particularly redolent of all of this is the opening "Eleven Houses," in which Jeon glides over Gomes' nylon-stringed Latin groove, occasionally locking melodic arms with him as they dance along their bright harmonic stairways. Interestingly, the one song that does not have any improvisation is their languid reading of Keith Jarrett's ballad "Prism," the pianist's meditative style a perfect match for the pair's deeply introspective aesthetic. Equally entrancing are cuts like Jeon's spiraling take on Steve Reichian's "Dancing Stars" and their kinetic bossa nova-meets-classical tango rendition of Carlos Aguirre's "Milonga Gris." While Jeon's primary focus is wordless vocalese, there are two songs that do have lyrics here, including a gorgeous version of the Jimmy Rowles and Norma Winstone number "A Timeless Place" and Jeon's own "Expecting Spring," the latter of which features Korean lyrics written by her mother, adding yet another texture to the duo's endlessly layered sound. With Home, Jeon and Gomes have crafted an album of nuanced beauty whose melodic textures shift delicately like shadows on a cloudy summer day.
© Matt Collar /TiVo