This Is Always: The Ballad Session

Produced by Joe Harley and engineered by Michael C. Ross, this an awesome collection of romantic ballads and other standards and features the sensational Tom Harrell on flugelhorn and trumpet and Bill Cunliffe on piano/arrangements.

Eden Atwood has a voice that is many things - seductive, plaintive, sensitive, gifted with perfect intonation and phrasing, and entertaining. Eden Atwood is one of the best young female jazz vocalist today! This DSD release represents Eden's best work to date. Her music shows the influence of many classic jazz and pop singers, including Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McRae, Sarah Vaughn, Rosemary Clooney, Julie London and Billie Holiday. 

* NativeDSD makes this recording available for the first time as a DSD Download to a wider audience, outside the US and Canada.
* NativeDSD exclusively offers this recording as DSD 128 and DSD 256 Downloads (see Tech Specs for more info).

"In modern times, the word “ballad” has come to mean a “slow, sentimental popular song, esp a love song,” or so claims Webster. That shallow definition ignores the fact that the ballad is a centuries-long tradition of human expression, one that spans Irish, Celtic, French and Mexican folk music, verse penned by Wordsworth, Keats and Shelly and 20th century standards from Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer, Sammy Cahn, Harry Warren and a host of others. Since ancient times, ballads have dwelt on love, good, bad and indifferent. No matter what time or place it hails from, the label “ballad” suggests form and function; rhythms, rhymes, stanzas and verse. Most importantly it is the expression of the human condition. (...)"

— Bill Kohlhaase has written about jazz for the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, Downbeat and other publications. From: Booklet Liner Notes

Many thanks to the fine musicians on this record. It is in your company that I feel able to express myself musically most fully and for that I am eternally grateful. Thank you, Tom, for your music. it was a humbling and uplifting experience for me. This record to dedicated to my husband, Bruce. For our home, our life and our son. I love you.

— Eden Atwood