The mix here is a Cole Porter cocktail, a dry martini but with a touch of jalapeno instead of olive. And while there are strains of melancholy, as Barber says in the notes: "Cole Porter never wrote a ...

On her marvelous new CD The Cole Porter Mix (Blue Note), out jazz diva Patricia Barber pays homage to her "songwriting idol." The 13 tunes, including three originals, are in Porter's words, "easy to ...

Patricia Barber is absolutely one of a kind. There are any number of jazz vocalists who have good voices, pitch, time, and piano chops; there are others who also sing as if they were looking straight ...

Second-division jazz singers can be as annoying as Z-list celebrities: there are too many of them, and they insist on making records. They get in the way of the genuine, first-division talent.