Jessica Young: This Jazz singer will make you feel like you belong to her

There are many women jazz vocalists who have been inspired by Billie Holiday, but there is one who really creates the Lady Day's touch without discontinuing her flow of notes -- Jessica Young. Based in Melbourne, Australia, her vocal style is tinged with impressive doses of Holiday's intonations and phrasings.
It is difficult not to feel that there is an inclination towards intensely romantic themes in her repertoire. Jessica's 2017 album, When I Fall in Love, features 12 songs which are all about affection and Billie Holiday so much loved to perform, including the title song, a composition by Victor Young and Jeri Southern.
Jessica's rendition of this classic, plus the album's opening track Summertime, indeed, as the other 11 songs attest, has a magnetic effect of overflowing romanticism and hypnotic touch.
Her caressingly smooth lyricism, like how her influencer Billie Holiday was celebrated, will definitely lead you to "submit" to her yearning when she goes: When I fall in love / It will be forever / Or I will never fall in love again .... A ballad, it opens with a solo guitar intro -- it evokes the legendary guitarist Joe Pass -- then followed with Ms Young's spaced out vocal phrasings; the guitar riffing augments her vocal textures.

Ms. Young does not at any moment sound in any sort of hurry, even on songs that gained massive popularity in mid-tempo renditions. She brilliantly slows them down -- I think it was all deliberate -- to encapsulate the listener into her feeling. Impressively, she creates a sense not only of closeness but also of belonging to her!
But there was nothing unexpected in letting her affection flow with the sort of accompaniment she got with a brilliant trio: drummer Steve Williams, pianist Massimo Farao' and bassist Aldo Zunino, with guest guitarist Eleonora Strino. On Summertime, a popular jazz standard by George Gershwin and Du Bose Heyward, Jessica introduces it with a stretched-out phrasing in the chorus. Not in a hurry, she applies a variety of intonations that create a captivating feel.