With Love Simone Kopmajer

• 1 The Look of Love 04:14
• 2 How Wonderful You Are 04:40
• 3 Until It's Time for You to Go 05:36
• 4 I Can't Make You Love Me 04:46
• 5 Opposites Attract 02:31
• 6 How Can You Mend a Broken Heart 04:36
• 7 Cold Cold Heart 03:01
• 8 I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter 03:16
• 9 For Once in My Life 05:06
• 10 Take It All In 04:06
• 11 Everything Happens to Me (feat. Sheila Jordan) 05:15
• 12 Tell It Like It Is 04:52
• 13 You Don´t Know Me (feat. John Di Martino) 04:38
• 14 Over the Rainbow 04:33
• Total Runtime 01:01:10

Info for With Love

Simone Kopmajer shines on her new album "With Love" as an immensely variable voice that knows how to set the accent that is always appropriate and, above all, unmistakably sounds like her, depending on the direction of a song. As one has come to expect from the Styrian-born singer, who has long been internationally known, she once again shows herself to be an artist who can immerse herself in the most diverse roles and fill them completely with life and feeling. She masters the soft, dreamy and melancholic tone just as masterfully as the seductive, bright and upbeat, moreover, she moves easily back and forth between the different genres and thus shows that she really knows absolutely no musical fear of contact.

In this sense, "With Love", recorded in the USA and Austria, also reveals itself to be an extremely varied and at the same time beguiling listening experience. Together with her band of top-class musicians John di Martino (piano), Harry Allen (saxophones), Boris Kozlov (bass), Reinhardt Winkler (drums) (the two guitarists Gottfried Gfrerer and Wesley Amorim as well as a string trio can also be heard in individual pieces) Simone Kopmajer has once again embarked on a journey through the music history of the last century and taken on some of the jazz and pop classics, to revive them in a new sound and new arrangements (for which John di Martino excels). But not only the new arrangements know how to convince. In addition to the selected pieces such as "Cold, Cold Heart" by Hank Williams, "It's Time for You to Go" by Buffy Sainte-Marie or "Over the Rainbow" from the pens of Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg, the album also includes two of the singer's own strong songs, "Take it all in" and "Opposites attract". And these fit perfectly into the overall picture.

"With Love" has become an album full of musical highlights, one that is peppered with songs that immediately make their way into the auditory canals and do not leave them so quickly. Simone Kopmajer delivers, as in the past, an impressive vocal performance, one that really knows how to inspire and underlines quite thickly why she is one of the leading female jazz voices in the country. (Michael Ternai, musicaustria.at)

Simone Kopmajer, vocals
Paul Urbanek, piano
Karl Sayer, bass
Reinhardt Winkler, drums
Wolfgang Puschnig, saxophone, flute

Simone Kopmajer
She has soul and a particular charismatic tone in her voice that gives each song that special something. Born in Schladming, Austria, Simone Kopmajer already achieved at a young age what many musicians, bands and ensembles dream of – the launch of a successful international career. In the United States, Japan and Southeast Asia, the singer is a household name for lovers of demanding and refined jazz music. She fills large concert halls, performs as the headliner of major international festivals and has sold thousands of CDs worldwide. Lo and behold, it seems as if only Austria is not quite aware of this outstanding and award winning singer.

In a time where everyone is complaining about declining CD sales, Simone Kopmajer managed the feat of selling more than 25,000 units of her album “Nothing’s Gonna Change” in Thailand last year. Not only is this a very impressive figure, in Thailand her release was also on the topof the list of the best-selling jazz albums of the year. Similarly impressive are the sales figures in Japan, where the Styrian-born musician made her breakthrough at an even earlier stage.

Her enthusiasm and love for music already kindled at a very early age. She began to sing at eight, with twelve she sang in the band of her father, who was a music school director and a big jazz fan, and at sixteen she was accepted at the University of Music and Dramatic Arts in Graz, where she was immediately admitted due to her rare talent. During her studies, she was given the opportunity to work with many renowned artists such as Mark Murphy, Sheila Jordan, Michele Hendricks, Jay Clayton and the New York Voices.

In the year 2000 she debuted in the U.S. and left a lasting impression among quite a few experts and connoisseurs of contemporary jazz music. Simone Kopmajer’s role models were the great voices of jazz and American show business, such as Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, and Jon Hendricks, although over time the Styrian-born detached herself more and more from these influences to findher own musical language.

With her charisma and unbelievable talent, Simone Kopmajer manages to give her songs a very specific emotional, charming and in-depth note, which simply touches the people. Her sound is located somewhere between jazz, swing and tasteful pop. Although her music is very relaxed, flowing and elegant, it is also very playful and varied – these multilayered facets distinguished her early off from similar formats and made her music all the more interesting.

With her debut album “Moonlight Serenade”, which was released in 2004 and produced by Todd Barkan, the award winning singer was able to land respectable successes, especially in Japan. As a consequence, the singer was able to steadily increase her popularity from one album to the next. Unfortunately her albums were not available in Austria for a very long time. In 2009 her album “Didn’t You Say”, recorded in collaboration with stars such as George Mraz, Houston Person, Victor Lewis and James Genus , finally also opened the gates to the domestic market.

The probably largest success of Simone Kopmajer’s carreer was with her fifth album “Nothing’s Gonna Change” in 2011, which, as already mentioned, made her a celebrated star in new realms such as Thailand, where she will perform as the main act of the major international Chiang Mai Jazz Festival in November.

It is safe to say that Simone Kopmajer is on her way to the very top. With the ability to constantly raise her musicto the next level, we may assume that there is yet a lot more to come and it will be excitingto see where the journey will still take this exceptional singer. (Michael Ternai)

This album contains no booklet.