Kalya Ramu - Trio
(Self Produced, 2024)
Kalya Ramu, Canadian jazz vocalist, composer, educator, and visual artist, has established herself in Toronto's growing jazz community. Beginning at 12-years old, Kalya immersed herself in the genre. This led her to graduating from the Bachelor of Music Degree Program at Humber College. Ramu has showed a keen ability to restructure classic jazz tunes into something fresh while infusing original compositions with sharp, expressive details. The singer released her debut full-length album, Living in a Dream (Self Produced, 2019), several selections being included on the soundtrack of CBC show Frankie Drake Mysteries. Ramu’s second album, Duo (Self produced, 2021), resulted from a collaboration with pianist and composer Ewen Farncombe.
Trio, the third studio album from Ramu, documents her work with guitarist Julien Bradley-Combs and upright bassist Duncan Hopkins in the close and intimate environs of a jazz trio. The recording features seven selections from the Great American Songbook, one original Ramu composition (“When The Moon Is High”), and a childhood favorite of Ramu’s by Israeli composer Yoni Rechter, with Hebrew lyrics by Yehonatan Geffen (“Hayalda Hachi Yafa Bagan”). The close confines in which they were recorded enhance these songs. Ramu favors the simple arrangements of the 1920s and ‘30s. Bassist Hopkins gave Henry Creamer and James P. Johnson’s 1927 composition, “If I Could Be With You,” a breezy stroll over which Bradley-Combs does his best Eddie Condon. The trio effectively suspends the Tizol-Ellington classic “Caravan” in mid-air.
The tryptic closing the disc ties the project together with the theme of imagined love lost and found. On Edward Heyman and Johnny Green’s “Out Of Nowhere,” Ramu bounces within a dream, while she looks to future love on Frankie Laine and Carl Fischer’s “We’ll Be Together Again.” The singer slips into a languid reverie on “You Go To My Head” where she leave us, quietly warm and satisfied. That is what music is supposed to do.