Two accomplished female vocalists, Andrea Wolper and Roxana Amed, backed by superlative musicians, each have a new album in which they address the pleasures and pains of being human.

Andrea Wolper
Wanderlust (Moonflower Music)
A review
Somehow I managed to miss hearing vocalist Andrea Wolper until now, despite her 26-year (at least) recording career and her association with pianist Connie Crothers, many of whose students and colleagues have found their way onto Musically Speaking. I am happy to have finally made her acquaintance via her latest release, Wanderlust, whose dozen tracks mix seven engaging originals (with or without lyrics) and five well-chosen covers. The clarity of her voice, her control of her instrument, her attention to tiny but essential details in phrasing, and her disciplined sense of adventure mark her as an distinctive and articulate vocalist, and her songwriting captures telling nuances of human experience and feeling. There’s a light in Wolper’s voice that illuminates even the darkest moments—a lover’s absence, the loss of youth, the impermanence of everything—and the opening track, “Light Out of Darkness” (Ray Charles/Rick Ward), provides what might be considered a statement of belief and purpose. Through the 12 tracks, she mines regret, gratitude, hope, love, desire, and desperation with an intimate warmth and compassion, and she as comfortably inhabits others’ material as she does her own, with selections from Wayne Carson, Abbey Lincoln, Carol King, and Sting. Wolper is superlatively supported by Jeff Lederer (clarinet, flute), who shares the production credit with Wolper, Charlie Burnham (violin), John Di Martino (piano), Ken Filiano (bass), and Michael TA Thompson (drums). An inventive and inviting vocalist, Wolper takes a satisfying journey on Wanderlust.

Roxana Amed
Becoming Human (Sony Music Latin)
A review
On the cover of her latest album, Becoming Human, Argentinian vocalist Roxana Amed’s hands are over her ears, as if she were blocking distractions the better to hear her interior life. Her latest album, Becoming Human, offers a poetic and passionate rendering of that interior, addressing her irresistible and not always comfortable need to create an artistic life and touching on the important stopping places along her journey. There’s something feral in Amed’s performance, an almost predatory spirit determined to catch its destiny, and catch it she does, with evocative original compositions (some with, some without lyrics), a rich and sensual vocal instrument with exceptionally wide tonal and timbral ranges (as noted in a previous review), and a wild vulnerability and intimacy. The album begins with the invocation of “A Prayer.” It then makes its dreamlike and sometimes disturbing way through happy and shadowed memories (the two wordless miniatures “Pequeña Voz” and “Destello,” “Our Days of Summer,” and “Then We Built a Home”), declarations of unapologetic commitment (“Those Horses Running in the Mist,” “Climbing Up My Spine,” and the wordless “Wild”), and deeply introspective challenges and prayer (“In This Lonely Room” and “Una Plegaria”). Amed finally makes her way to a fruitful accommodation of life’s demanding vicissitudes, her ever-present solitude, and her own complex humanity (“Epílogo”). Her remarkably sympathetic band goes with her every step of the way: Mark Small (soprano and tenor sax, clarinet, bass clarinet, and flute), Martin Bejerano (piano), Edward Perez (bass), and Ludwig Afonso (drums), with the addition of Kendall Moore (trombone) on several tracks. Becoming Human offers a deeply personal chronicle of a difficult passage to a hard-won resolution, and Amed pulls no punches in this emotionally raw and artistically spellbinding account of her journey. Go here to check it out.

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