Jazz vocalist, composer and producer Lauren Kinhan presents her first all standard record of her career paying homage to the great Nancy Wilson and her iconic collaboration with Cannonball Adderley entitled “A Sleepin’ Bee.” The Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderley record was on high rotation in my childhood which easily factored into cementing my life long love affair with jazz and the impact of words and music. I memorized all of her features that were cleverly interlaced between Adderley’s instrumentals. Her soulful horn like timbre sang like a bird, yet played like an instrument. And she paired so beautifully with the incredible musicians that made up that recording date. Choosing 5 of the 6 vocal performances from the album as a launching point, I collaborated with pianist Andy Ezrin exploring arranging ideas and we quickly found a vibe that was fluid, swinging, and personal. Digging into another brilliant project she did with George Shearing, “The Swingin’s Mutual,” garnered 2 more gems, “Born to Be Blue,” and the lesser known, but oh so clever, “Let’s Live Again.” With seven tunes on the list, the rest of the songs came from other early recordings, venturing no further than 1964 when she won her first Grammy for the single, “(You Don’t Know) How Glad I Am.” Over the course of 2016, we arranged these songs and performed them a handful of times with Matt Wilson and Ben Allison. What to do next was the burning question once the music took form. On New Years Day I phoned Elliot Schiener to wish him a Happy 2017 and he had an idea……….We pitched recording this record at Berklee College of Music as an educational exchange, whereby the students would observe a master engineer at work and an ensemble of musicians commit a record to disc in two days. Before we knew it we had a green light from Berklee and Andy and I had to work fast to pull together a trio. With texts flying and schedules hurling left and right, we were fortunate to lock in Matt Penman on bass, Jared Schonig on drums and Ingrid Jensen for cameo trumpeting. One long rehearsal later, we waltzed into The Shames Family Scoring Stage on February 3rd and began setting up the room for a long weekend’s jam. Eight time Grammy award winning, Elliot Schiener, and I wanted to record all of us in the same room, allowing performances and leakage of microphones much the way those records in the 1960’s were captured. He wanted that sound and smell of live music going to tape and I wanted to weave that web where kinship and art unite. No difference in intention, really. Where this project was unique is that we had a room full of students and teachers hanging out observing the session all day long. Plus we had cameras from Hal Leonard capturing the “making of.” So it was ripe for stress, none of which entered our minds, however. We used the pressure and turned it into an intimate performance space and allowed our fragility and ambition to spark the muse to play to the room and circumstance. Following my nose on the final tune selection came down to whether I had an arranging idea and a pathway in. Some of the final choices were just plain creative license. I fell in love with Nancy’s performance of Billy Strayhorn’s “Passion Flower” which led me to listening to Johnny Hodge’s version. The slippery soul of this piece with all it’s angular melodic and harmonic motion was a dress I had to try on. We paired it with Nat Adderley’s “The Old Country” for reasons I can’t explain, it was one of those ideas that hit me and we found a way to build that arranging bridge. Coming across a stripped down live in Paris version of her Grammy Award Winning “(You Don't Know) How Glad I Am,” footage in black and white, with band set up in the round, and Nancy standing in the middle, was an inspiring find. Her stark yet beautiful performance led us to stripping it down even more, lacing it with gospel overtones, a conversation between piano, bass an voice, and just letting the words knock at your soul. “Guess Who I Saw Today,” being one of Nancy’s most iconic performances, was re-purposed into a song in 3/4, playing ironically into the adulterous storyline. With a dated verse reminiscent of 1950’s marriage mores, those words hang strangely in the air in today’s times, equal parts theater and satire. Conjuring Shearing into the arranging palette, Ezrin took inspiration from how much that harmony could be clustered, while I proposed the 3 against 4 motif that threads throughout the piece. Abstaining from singing the final three words until the very end of the performance holds the listener in suspension and lets the words play their final trump. New York Voices performed “Save Your Love For Me” for Nancy at her National Endowment for the Arts Induction in 2004, a thrill I won’t forget, and on our Big Band “Sing, Sing, Sing” record. Ordinarily that would be enough, but we found a way to strip it of all it’s stays and corsets and let the song find a deeper, quieter moan. And finally, we stretched out on an arrangement I had in the works for “You Don’t Know What Love Is” that found a home in this homage setting. No one can tell you how to live your creative life when the world doesn’t make any sense and the rules of art hold fewer and fewer incentives, so it boils down to pure inspiration and instinct that drives the artist to the studio. I didn’t know I would find such peace in the making of this project; going home to a pallete of music that in fact made me become the thinker I am, it was truly liberating and joyful. I hope you enjoy “A Sleepin’ Bee” as much as we did making it. There are many people to thank for it’s production, the least of which Andy Ezrin and Elliot Schiener are first and foremost. Followed by my family, the musicians and the students who took this joyous ride to the very finish, mixing it at Elliot’s home. Indeed, my Kickstarter family came through big time. And finally, thank you to Nancy Wilson, who’s voice and spirit led me to this place, I’m wide awake now.