Rebecca Martin
| Rebecca Martin | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Background information | |
| Born |
24 April 1969 Rumford, Maine, U.S. |
| Genres | Jazz, vocal jazz, pop |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, singer, songwriter |
| Instruments | Vocals, guitar |
| Years active | 1990–present |
| Labels | MAXJAZZ, Sunnyside |
| Associated acts | Once Blue, Tillery, Becca Stevens, Gretchen Parlato, Jazz Duos, Larry Grenadier |
| Website | www |
Rebecca Martin (born April 24, 1969) is an American singer and songwriter from Rumford, Maine.
Martin was a young girl when she left her rural hometown of Rumford, Maine to pursue her musical ambitions in New York, where she met fellow singer-songwriter Jesse Harris. The duo formed the group Once Blue, which won a recording contract with EMI. Once Blue's 1995 debut release won international acclaim, but a second album remained unreleased until 2003.
Martin launched her solo career in 1998 with Thoroughfare, written and produced by Martin. In 2002, she produced a collection of standards, Middlehope, which The New York Times named one of the year's ten best jazz albums. In 2004, Martin released another album of original compositions, People Behave Like Ballads.
In 2005, Martin recorded with jazz drummer/composer Paul Motian as featured vocalist on Motian's On Broadway Vol. 4 or The Paradox of Continuity, becoming the first singer to accompany Motian on one of his recordings. Martin credits the experience with informing her attitude toward her own recordings in subsequent years. "The experience of making music with Paul changed my life, and set me on a completely new path in how I approached my own music,” she explains. "It was the first time I'd recorded without a chordal instrument, and that was a revelation for me. It was also liberating to be working with one of my idols in an atmosphere that was completely down to earth and blue-collar. Everybody involved came in to do the job in a couple of takes, and we were always finished by dinnertime. It was a real collaboration and working unit, and it was eye-opening to be a part of something like that."
After Motian's album was released in 2006, Martin was asked to perform with him at Carnegie Hall as part of a tribute concert to the Village Vanguard's Lorraine Gordon, and she and Motian subsequently performed music from the project during a two-week run at the Village Vanguard.
Martin began to apply Motian's less-is-more ethic to work after moving to the Sunnyside label with her 2008 release The Growing Season, produced by Kurt Rosenwinkel and featuring Larry Grenadier and Brian Blade on bass and drums, respectively. The album met with enthusiastic response, including a New York Times critic's pick, which praised her "warm, unguarded voice, an instrument of modesty and forbearance," adding, "She can make the same phrase seem philosophical and conversational, and about as natural as sighing… She makes this album feel momentous, in the quietest possible way."
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