CD Review from Jazzwise, Issue 185, May 2014

**** (4 stars)

Hot on the heels of Soweto Kinch’s The Legend of Mike Smith, comes another treatment of the Seven Deadly sins, this one a 50-minute song suite for voice and septet by vocalist, composer and educator Louise Gibbs. Both in its conception and execution, 7 Deadly Sings (Gibbs’s fifth recording for 33Jazz) is an unqualified triumph. Each movement is inspired by the distinctive ‘voice’ of one of the instrumentalists, with the voice, naturally enough, featured first in a brief ‘Prologue’. Emerging out of an extended cymbal roll, we first hear …

The CheerSing workshops (part of the Yorkshire Festival 2014 and the Tour de France) are proving to be lots of creative fun – with an enthusiastic response from participants. We’re winning over keen singers and folk reluctant to raise their voices in public – let along sing. Making up and chanting slogans about life and bicycles is the way to go it seems. So is finding new ways of making a bigger, brighter more efficient vocal sound. Age is no barrier, either. So far participants have ranged from 9 months (the babe lay on the floor clapping along) to, as …