Laila Biali - Wintersongs
(Self Produced, 2024)
Canadian musician (the only single word covering “singer, pianist, composer, arranger, and radio host) Laila Biali is a creative force of nature. She has been recording (mostly self produced) since 2004, beginning with Introducing The Laila Biali Trio and winding her way through a staggering 30-plus recordings, 11 as leader. And that is an estimate, as her discography is sprawling. That being said, if considering only her previous two recordings, the listener very well may be overwhelmed with the breadth of her creative reach. Out of Dust (Self Produced, 2020) is a collection of Baili originals firmly set in the genre of adult contemporary tempered with jazz and popular music. She is an assertive and muscular pianist capable of great virtuosity, contained in a relentless swing capable of causing nosebleeds. She is a pan-amazing vocalist who knows no perimeter to her potent, sensual, and expansive performance style.
Biali’s 2023 collection of jazz standards, Your Requests (Imago), revealed a fertile mind and commanding confidence in both choosing her material and the delivery of the same. All About Jazz Dan Bilawsky praises Biali for her generous egalitarianism and approach, stating:
“[Biali] has a keen awareness that the act of making music does not—or should not—exist in a vacuum, and that those who create are often best fueled by people who'll be hearing their creations. Her success, be it through covers or finely-crafted originals, has always been linked to the understanding of a need for receptive ears, and that fact is magnified with this listener-friendly project.”
Biali’s newest project, Wintersongs, besides being decidedly seasonal, can also pass for a holiday offering, one inventive as it is appropriate. Composed in a cabin surrounded by snow-capped mountains during a writing retreat in the heart of Canada’s Rocky Mountains, Wintersongs captures the composer’s love of winter in all of her comforting glory. The program opener, “Drifting Down Ice” finds Biali singing over a harmony and melody recently departed from New Age and heading into that special creative space of her imagination. “Prelude to Outside/Outside” expresses a broad soundtrack sweep that could find its way into a variety of imaginary scenarios. Plush strings cushion “Snow” a melody and subject that would have been perfectly at home in The Sound of Music (20th Century Fox, 1965).
The recording closes with two instrumentals, “Winter Waltz (Belle nuit de Noël)” and “Jesus, He Is Born (Iesous ahatonnia’)", the former with a quaint touch of the old world while the latter is what happens to New Age Holiday music when it meets the higher thinking of a superb musician like Laila Biali.