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KATHY KOSINS MUSIC Kathy Kosins – Uncovered Soul Buy at Amazon Buy at iTunes Stream on Spotify When I find an album that I like as much as this one on my first listen, I have to check myself by listening to it again the next day to make sure I heard what I thought I heard. As I played it again on day two I was thinking how much I loved the record, then I noticed something that I had somehow missed the first time around. It was a gorgeous cover of the Blue Nile's "The Downtown Lights". This completely knocked it out of the park for me. Kathy Kosins' Uncovered Soul gets better upon repeat play. Although Kosins' has somehow eluded me until now, she has had quite an accomplished career. She distinguished herself as a writer, arranger, and session vocalist and she sang with Was, Not Was both in the studio and on the road. All this before morphing into a jazz artist with a string of albums that began in 1996 with All In A Dreams Work . Uncovered Soul , ac...

Photo by John Abbott After writing of a new album that excites me, in this case Don Braden's Earth, Wind And Wonder , there is nothing better than finding that the artist is coming to town for a live gig. The Don Braden Quartet played Chris' Jazz Cafe in center city Philadelphia on Saturday, June 2nd. They opened with Earth, Wind & Fire's "Fantasy", a song so recognizable that you wouldn't mistake it for anything else. At the end of the song, after introducing the musicians, Braden explained the concept of Earth, Wind And Wonder saying that it's a process as old as jazz, to take a popular song and play it with creative improvisation and a little swing. The Braden Quartet did just that. Stevie Wonder's "Don't You Worry 'Bout A Thing" stretched out in a much longer version than you hear on the record, allowing each of the musicians room to display their chops. Next up was "I Can't Help It," a piece that Wonder w...

Photo courtesy of Lissie Out on tour to publicize her new album Castles , Lissie played the downstairs venue at World Cafe Live on Saturday, May 25th. With the tables and chairs removed for the show, most of the good sized audience was standing and dancing with the general admission arrangement. Lissie played a crowd-pleasing set that included seven of Castles' thirteen tracks, as well as ten more from her three previous albums. The setlist below includes which album each song came from. If you are comparing the setlist below to the photograph of the actual setlist, you may notice that a song is missing; Lissie called an audible mid-set to skip "Meet Me In The Mystery" from Castles . The new album, one of her best, was well served by her set selection, which had a good balance of old and new. I may be in a minority when I say that I go to a show like this hoping to hear the newest release as well as some old favorites. Artists don't need to apologize for playing ...