Higher (DXD Edition)

Recording of the Month

Like most The Absolute Sound (TAS) readers, I first heard Patricia Barber, whose career here approaches the 40-year mark, on Café Blue. Her 1994 album that made her a star in high-end audio, owing to a superb recording by her long-time engineer Jim Anderson, and among connoisseurs of innovative, cutting-edge jazz.

Although classically trained, she is known for a cool, intense, highly personal style as singer, pianist, and songwriter. Higher, her 18th album and first in the studio since 2013’s Smash, showcases what may be her most ambitious, and surely her most personal, composition yet,

Angels, Birds, and I . . ., a cycle of eight songs she frankly calls art songs (she performed an early version with Renée Fleming in 2016). Dualities inform several of them, from lesbian lovers and a woman leaving her wealthy husband (“the sovereign suburban overlord”) for her free-spirited lover (“a wandering albatross”) to those that inform Barber’s own creativity as pianist, singer, and lyricist.

Layered with multiple meanings, these introspective songs require and reward repeated listening. Inventive takes on three standards from the Great American Songbook fill out the program. The contributions from Barber’s instrumental quartet are first-class. Immediate, close-up, transparent sonics.

Patricia Barber is more than the sum of her talents. As a composer, she peels back the craft of song to expose its barest textures, cultivating each like a tree that, while holding its own shape above ground, makes apparent the roots below it. As a singer, she understands not only that we perform our voices but also that our voices perform us.

Higher chronicles an extroverted leap of intuition. It's as much a courageous dive inward, plumbing deeper-than-ever emotional reserves by blending whimsy and seriousness into an organic whole. Its centerpiece is "Angels, Birds, and I...," an eight-part art song cycle that polishes multiple facets of a modern soul trying to maintain her nonstick coating in an abrasive world.

"I feel very much that this album is a manifestation of my hard-won harmonic evolution," Barber says. The result of six years' labor, these sonic dioramas sound at once out of time and utterly relevant: "Art song is its own world. Even though you have these improvisational envelopes, it's distinct from jazz. The harmonies are much vaster and difficult to put into words. One moment it all sounds new to us, and another it sounds familiar. This album is my own particular way of mixing those two things."

Through it all, bassist Patrick Mulcahy, drummer Jon Deitemyer, guitarist Neal Alger and saxophonist Jim Gailloreto document every emotional turn of phrase with nothing short of archival assurance. "These musicians have been working with me for a long time," says Barber. "I was lucky in not needing to travel far to find the best people for this project. Because they're playing chamber music, they had to approach it differently. They were vital to its development."

Vital, too, is Barber's pianism as it winds through a smattering of standards to round out the album. Her rendition of Dave Brubeck's "In Your Own Sweet Way" is a highlight and stands firm alongside a savvily arranged "Secret Love." The encore, as it were, comes to us by way of lyric soprano Katherine Werbiansky, whose take on "The Opera Song" gives us another side of the story. By the end of all this, we have encountered songs that change both within their own skins and between them, each a life in miniature waiting to nourish itself on the food of our attention.

Higher mostly consists of a suite, Angels, Birds, and I . . ., that addresses various natural and preternatural stimuli that initiate much of human art: the muse itself, the seasons, dreams, and longings (including lust), and iconoclasts of the natural world. And if one does not “get” the intent to be extra generic, there’s a piece called “The Opera Song,” which has a second rendition on this album sung by an actual opera singer, Katherine Werbiansky.
This new album bears repeated listening well. Its relative simplicity seems dedicated to the songs that clearly address the context of creation: “Muse,” “Surrender,” “Voyager,” and “Higher” (written for her mother). “Surrender” is amplified by an exquisite Spanish guitar solo from Neil Alger. A metaphorically stated Christmas romance song, “Pallid Angel,” is elevated by a sensuous tenor sax interlude from Jim Gailloreto.
As for her trio, one notes the exquisite bass work of Patrick Mulcahy, whose presence provides continual contrapuntal companionship. Drummer Jon Deitemyer is understated in this environment. We hear more of him during the last part of the release, when the trio gets to play more jazz-oriented material. Like Brubeck’s “In Your Own Sweet Way.” Johnny Mercer’s “Autumn Love,” in hushed tones, and Paul Webster/Sammy Fein’s “Secret Love,” a rushed treat, are a yin-yang of theme. Except for Guaraldi-like moments of “Sweet Way,” this is not a noisy collection. Even “Secret Love,” delivered bebop-style, sounds reined in.

“Higher” took several years to reach its destination. With financing through the nonprofit organization ArtistShare and the donations of individual funders, songwriter-singer-pianist Patricia Barber rehearsed and recorded an eight-song cycle of new compositions with her working group of Patrick Mulcahy, bass, and John Deitemeyer, percussion, augmented by former group member, guitarist Neal Alger and frequent live collaborator, saxophonist Jim Gailloreto. At the board was Barber’s longtime engineer Jim Anderson.

The song cycle, entitled "Angels, Birds and I...", expresses Patricia Barber's poetic sensibility through the vehicle of literary language wedded to contemporary art music. Though she never refers to her lyrics as poetry, her verses capture the experience of the senses and the workings of a creative imagination.

In addition to the new original songs, the album contains a short set of standards drawn from Barber’s live repertoire. An instrumental version of Dave Brubeck’s “In Your Own Sweet Way” brings focus to her technical dexterity and highly personal piano conception.

“Early Autumn” captures the trio in delicate shades of expression. With subtle brushwork and cymbal accents from drummer Deitemeyer, and an unobtrusive, supportive foundation from bassist Mulcahy, the ensemble updates the classic jazz piano trio for the 21st century. Barber is an outstanding interpreter of songs from the late 1940s. “Early Autumn” was composed by Woody Herman’s pianist-arranger Ralph Burns and the great lyricist Johnny Mercer. Mercer’s melancholy lyrics convey the distance between the romanticized images of love and the growing alienation of mid-century America. The song had fallen into obscurity, but Patricia Barber’s moving performance should lead to its revival.

"Higher" was recorded in 2019 in DXD 352.8. With this release, collectors can enjoy the superb quality of Jim Anderson’s recording, and, like the ArtistShare funders who made the production possible, show support for Patricia Barber’s lifelong project to advance the art of the song.

As a singer and writer, Patricia Barber has never been easy to define. In the audiophile world, she's too often defined—and her brilliance obscured—by her ubiquity at audio shows and her regrettable membership in a sorority of generic, well-recorded "female vocalists."

Most of Barber's early work was obviously Jazz, and today she continues to perform straight-ahead Jazz on Monday nights at Chicago's Green Mill, where she has appeared for decades. Over time, though, her studio work has shifted toward meticulously accompanied poetry, especially on the albums Verse and Mythologies, and she has been keeping company with opera singers and classical music scholars.

Higher bears the earmarks of an audiophile classic. Music of substance in excellent sound. It was recorded, mixed, and mastered in DXD (24/352.8). Jim Anderson, Barber's longtime recording engineer, has received 26 Grammy nominations and 10 awards, and Bob Ludwig, the mastering engineer, has received 15 Grammy nominations, 11 Grammy awards, and two Latin Grammys. Together, they've created a pristine production in which every whisper and unique color receives due attention. Heard on a high-end system—I summoned Roon to stream files to a dCS Rossini DAC and then to Acoustic Arts Mono II monoblocks and Wilson Audio Alexia 2s using premium cabling and accoutrements—the detail, color, texture, and silence between notes can be counted on to reward the pains we take to assemble a perfectionist audio system.

This review only hints at the mysteries that Barber probes with typical intellect, musicianship, and heart with her pure dark whisper. This is perfect for low light and quiet contemplation. Higher deserves more than a listen.