Jeff Cascaro

Releases: Soul Of A Singer | Mother And Brother

Jeff Cascaro
Soul Of A Singer
Release: 12.05.2006
Distribution: edel contraire
901001 HER

He is a singer. One of the best. "Soul of a Singer" is his definite album. This really is all you need to know, before you start to listen to these exceptional songs.

Of course, any further curiosity shall be rewarded: Jeff Cascaro has been singing ever since. He started his carreer at the young age of 18 as the winner of a youth jazz contest. He gained experience as a background singer and guest musician for and with stars and stadium-fillers like Joe Sample of the Crusaders or Die Fantastischen Vier (Germany's most successful Hip Hop-outfit), popsinger Sasha, rockers like Guano Apes or H-Blockx, plus all major German Radio Big Bands and a few more international stars. Born in 1968 and bred in the industrial town of Bochum, he is now a steady and welcome guest on all major networks, from ZDF to MTV, and can be seen as a coach on Germany's most successful casting-show "Deutschland sucht den Superstar". He recently toured as the featured soloist of the Ray Charles-program with the HR Big Band. Since 2000 the versatile practicioner also works academically: he is a professor of jazz singing at the "Franz List" Conservatory in Weimar. But even though this very vocal emotionalist is almost ubiquitous on radio and television, and has put his vocals to more than a dozen album-productions, ""Soul Of A Singer" is his debut under his own name and direction.

• Press Material More information and pics for download.  
• www.jeffcascaro.com the official german Website - leave a message at Jeff's blog.  

"I am this album", says Jeff Cascaro. "I do not only sing the songs, I feel them. They are my experiences - and it's exactly my music, of course. I was ten years old, sitting in short pants and sandals in a bumper car, when Diana Ross' "Upside down" really blew my mind. Twenty years on I was singing Kurt Weill songs with the HR Big Band and then found myself singing Ray Charles songs with the same outfit last year. All that and everything in between is "Soul of a Singer"!" Jeff Cascaro has every right to be proud of this album. It convinces and excites with ten new and highly original compositions, by Cascaro himself, as well as by Kaphengst and Kleiner, with lyrics by Henning Wehland of H-Blockx or the American pianist and poetess Robin Goldsby. "Love will find a way" by Lionel Richie and Curtis Mayfield's "Trippin' Out", the two cover-versions, are in a class by themselves and still fit in perfectly, because Jeff Cascaro devotes himself to these beautiful melodies and grooves so personally and in such a profound manner - really making them his own - that you almost forget where the songs came from originally.

"It took us no more than eight days for these recordings", says Jeff Cascaro. "There were hardly any arrangements, but we really took care in selecting just the right musicians. They understand this music and play it as if they'd never played anything else in their life. We started by really talking about what we wanted to achieve with these songs, then we sat down and recorded them in one take - just the way it should be." Jeff Cascaro and his friend and producer Christian von Kaphengst, who also plays all basses on this album, hired the musical créme de la créme for the recording of "Soul of a Singer". The pianist and keyboarder Ulf Kleiner could be called Cascaro's favourite collaborator, as the man from Mainz accompanies the singer whenever possible. Guitarist Bruno Müller, known from his work with legendary German entertainers and bands like Udo Jürgens, Stefan Raab, Till Brönner and "Café du Sport", is another one of Cascaro's long-standing musical friends.

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