Event Category: Live Music
As a jazz singer, Rebekah Victoria’s performance repertoire tends to come overwhelmingly from the era of the Great American Songbook: the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s. As she was preparing to record her second album, however, Victoria was inspired to widen her musical perspective in terms of both time periods and popular styles. Songs of the Decades, her investigation of the music from each decade of the twentieth century, will be released June 21, 2019 through Patois Records.
If the album is retrospective, though, it is the furthest thing from nostalgic. “I wanted to make these songs different—
I wanted them to sound very new and fresh,” says Victoria, who is based in the San Francisco Bay Area. “The idea was to make them as much fun to listen to now as they were in their day, when they were big hits. For the people that really know these songs, they’ll get a kick out of the differences.”
Wayne Wallace, the Grammy-nominated trombonist, composer-arranger, and bandleader who is also the head of Patois Records, acted as Victoria’s partner for the album. He co-produced it, wrote all of its arrangements—often incorporating elements of Latin jazz, his specialty—and assembled its superlative cast of 24 musicians, including improvising vocalist Kenny Washington, Wallace’s bandmates from his own various projects, and a string quintet that features members of the San Francisco Symphony.
“I was so happy with how it all turned out,” Victoria says. “Wayne’s arrangements really captured the freshness I wanted, and the musicians he chose were just fantastic. It was a great experience overall.”