Mezzo-Soprano Alicia Hall Moran Combines Covers With Mostly Original Songs on Artful CD "Here Today" from Yes Records

Here Today

Alicia Hall Moran

Yes Records

Alicia Hall Moran

Giovanni Russonello of The New York Times is just one of several reviewers to greet Alicia Hall Moran's Yes Records CD Here Today with high praise:

Few could pull this off, and hardly anyone would try. But Alicia Hall Moran, an operatic mezzo-soprano, is irreverent and gutsy and well outside any box. Here she gives us a spurned and slow, minor-key rendition of Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered,” singing with just a string trio behind her and interlacing it with passages of “Habañera,” the famous aria from “Carmen” about chasing an elusive love.

The liner notes begin:

HERE TODAY combines the artist's revelatory new tracks with covers of famous standards by Georges Bizet, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, and Stevie Wonder:  As ever in Hall Moran's work, a range of musical styles, tones, and tempers are dynamically cross-wired and recombined.  Her inimitable operatically-trained voice-at turns sly and simmering, sophisticated and soulful-unites her expansive aesthetic vision and places black female being at the heart of the modern world.  At once looking forward to futures that might be and looking back on tragedies that continue to unfold, Here Today offers us allegories of the present.  Indeed, this album carves out some space for luxuriating in the wonders of Hall Moran's voice while reckoning with the dark histories she enjoins us to witness.

Alicia Hall Moran wrote the words and music to these songs on the CD:

Oklahoma Girl

Gold

Not Today

I Am The Fire

We All Just Live In The World

Who Are You?

Love Hurts

2 Train To Wall Street

Black Wall Street

Higher

Metal is by Alicia Hall Moran and Gene Alexander Peters.

Performers

Alicia Hall Moran - voice/piano

Brandon Ross - guitar

Thomas Flippin - guitar/theorbo

Chala Yancy - violin

JT Lewis - drums

Melvin Gibbs - bass

Lorenzo Rundo - viola

Francesco Parente - cello

Gene Alexander Peters - antique chains

Jason Moran - piano

The operatic voice of mezzo-soprano Alicia Hall Moran is on full display on every track of this recording, which has been produced with great artistry.  The covers and original songs form a coherent whole.  We highly recommend this disc to listeners who appreciate cutting-edge operatic performances.