2006 BEST Female Vocal CD/SACD/XRCD

Singh Kaur is pure musical beauty. Think Enya X2. Angelic voice and musical spirit of the highest level. Pure medicine for the soul. Listening to her today after the horrific events in Paris yesterday. No Isis devil could listen to her and not wilt.

What?? No mention of Sarah Vaughn?

My new favorite female singer is Nancy LaMott. A night club singer who died recently at 43. Her cd is My Foolish Heart with emotionally charged renderings of many songs from the great American songbook. The song "The Best is Yet to Come" is one of the most provocative songs ever. The whole cd is intense, emotional, and somewhat sad, but well recorded and well sung.
John

Bander, you're right about Vienna Teng. I saw her live in Charlotte (she opened for Mindy Smith) and she was both a fine singer and pianist. The great thing about that experience was she played in an acoustically restored movie theater so the audience was small and the sound terrific.

mmm,

Janis Ian - Breaking the silence
Norah Jones - Feels like home
Sara K - Water falls

and the best of the best!

Madelein Peyroux - Careless Love...

Dewald Visser

Any other suggestion? more is better :-)

Lizz Wright is fantastic! The album "Dreaming Wide Awake" sounds very good. The engineering is great!! Highly recommended!

Some good suggestions, I could'nt agree more about Sarah K, Rosie Thomas, eleanor Mcevoy and many others. Some other suggestions:
Karrin Allyson
Katrine Madsen (hard to find but worth the look, great Danish Jazz singer)
Stacey Kent
Cecilia Bartoli
Kate Rusby(great British folk singer)
Eliza Gilkyson
So many more, but you won't be disappointed by any of them. I will look out some of the recommedations here, particularly Lizz Wright.

Sara K - "Hell or High Water" on SACD

See the reviews on SA-CD.net
http://www.sa-cd.net/showtitle/3731

I'd say this is the best SACD I own, both in terms of sound quality and music. I'm referring to the SACD stereo layer since I don't listen to multi-channe.

CARLA BRUNI
-good recording, great sultry voice; sings in french

Audiorichard:
I second you choice http://www.nativelanguage.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=NLM&Product_Code=NLM-0949-2
I just bought her CD and her music, the simple sonics of the acoustic trio and her voice in this Native Language recording are superb. (I see a copy of this CD is currently available on EBay for a thifty price!) God, I love Audiogon.

We both went to school in the US, but this was before that in Singapore. She's a really sweet person and I'm really glad that she's found success. Everyone who heard her sing in school thought that she had a fantastic voice!

eujin, you went to school with Corrinne? Did both of you go to school in the US?

I saw Corrinne at the Borders in Costa Mesa CALIF last year. She has a very good voice and seems like a very nice person.

You check out her music.

Nice choice with Eleanor McEvoy. I actually went to school with Corinne May! But don't currently own any of her music.

Bander, GREAT reference to Vienna Teng...I also like Corrinne May.

Eleanor Mcevoy is also fantastic!

A lot of greats listed here. Another is Vienna Teng, a classically trained pianist.

Her's is a very unique style. Poetic, lyrical, sparse at times; heartbreaking melodies. Some influences include Tori Amos, and Sarah McLaughlin. Her cd "Warm Strangers " is a winner. There's a newer one out that I'm not familiar with.

I too love female vocals. I just picked this one off the shelf at Borders last summer (2006 but realeased 05) Great voice and great recording for a redbook cd. On my system it sounds as good as sacd and the soundstage is wide with an you are there performance. It has displaced Sade, Nora Jones and others as my current favorite.
Lizz Wright / Dreaming Wide Awake.

Chan Marshall. Cat Power's " The Greatest"!!

AYO -2006- Joyful

Timely note, Madhf. Looking for some Christmas music in Fry's today and saw the new Loreena - I did not know it was out yet. I'll put it on in a minute and report back.

Regards,

"An Ancient Muse" by Loreena McKennitt Just recently released. Great music!!

Roberta Gambarini. Jazz vocalist extraordinaire!!!

it's available at Amazon
OR
Iren Lovasz "Egi Hang" (Sacred Voice) - you can find her at
http://www.lovasziren.hu/eng/index.html
go to Demo

Congratulations to the Duhks for an unexpected and well deserved Grammy nomination.

Who? Ella?

Best female vocalist ever in my humble opinion. One listen to "Blues in the night" is all you need to hear how amazingly talented this woman was.

How about Hem? The singer is Jennifer Ellison. They play what is often described as chamber music. They are an incredible band that has yet to be discovered.

Jennifer Warnes, "Famous blue raincoat"

Sarah Buxton. Heard her 1st appearance on Grand Ole Opry.

A country twang to a mixture of Stevie Nix and Sarah McGlaughlin.

AR:

I still think that you are better off doing this by genres, but rather than have you pout ...

Anna Netrebko

her most recent work is
Violetta - Selections from La Traviata / Netrebko, et al .

Regards, Rich

I know it is hard, but since my title is BEST female vocalist of 2006, which mean just ONE female can entitle the best! Give the name of vocalist and the name of CD, and explain why you think she is the best?

thanks..

Keeping it to 2006 narrows things down a bit, but a very nice standards singer is Robin McKelle, who debuted this year with her self-titled cd. Just a couple of years older, coming out in 2004, the "all of our names" cd from Sarah Harmer gets a lot of play on my system -- the sound quality is also quite good. Audphile1, I've heard Peyroux and she is very good but I've not yet purchased any of her cd's -- need to leave something for the gift list ;-)

forgot one...

Cesaria Evora - "The Very Best of Cesaria Evora"
brilliant singer by the way

Jacintha - "Jacintha Is Her Name"
Linda Ronstadt - "What's New".
Eliane Elias - "Dreamer"
Madeleine Peyroux - "Half the Perfect World" this one is a 2006 release

Sara K - Water Falls, is a nice bluesy album, and extremely well recorded. I also love Rosie Thomas's When We Were Small. It's leagues above the rest of her small catalog (mentioning that so if you've heard anything else by her don't judge). It's become one of my all-time favorites, actually.

John,
I have a couple OTR albums and really like them. Another CDBaby find was Third Road Home - Sister/brother act, and Trinity has a very good voice with better songwriting talents ... al but one cut is hers.

One of my fav's is Tift Merritt - her first sounds like the premature reincarnation of Emmylou Harris, her second is more roots rock, and again she writes almost all her own music. And she's a great kid (well, not a kid anymore actually)

Some other somewhat different non-traditional-best-female vocals:

Ruthie Foster (try 'Hymns' - it's not what it sounds like)
Kasey Chambers (first one more 'country', second and third more rock, but categorization is blurry)
Ollabelle - bluegrass and gospel

And a final favorite - Maura O'Connell. Try 'Stories' - produced by Jerry Douglas (who also plays on it along with Edgar Meyer, James Taylor and many others). More of the 'traditional best voice' with a Celtic/Country/rock twist.

Over the Rhine - Ohio

Available on double cd, or vinyl.

www.overtherhine.com

A really great band with a dozen albums out. No one seems to know them because they never really had a radio hit.

John C.

And Margo Timmins (Cowboy Junkies) is ALWAYS a great pick. Her brothers and her put together another great album, Early 21st Century Blues. it's mainly a great covers album, but the 3 originals are some of my most favorite Junkies songs in the past few years. Saw them in Kent OH last month and they were incredible.

I have fallen in love with an acoustic band that features Jessica Havey on vocals. This young group of players from Canada called The Duhks plays an interesting mix of Celtic, Traditional, Gospel, Zydeco, even Reggae, and more. Jessica Havey has a voice that can be clean and clear, a little smoky and soulful at times and compelling without flashy pyrotechnics or style for its own sake. Their recent release, Migrations, is well recorded and features a variety of styles. Between Havey's vocals and Tania Elizabeth's sweet violin, my ears are caught in an aural love triangle.
Just listen to the track "Who Will Take My Place?". A true relief from over produced rubbish and a lesson on how to take a simple song and cut directly to the heart.

AR:

I think that female vocals gets interesting, when the listener is willing to explore different genres of music. Typically female vocals is taken to mean jazz and pop music and then you get the usual suspects ... Eva Cassidy, Norah Jones, Diana Krall, Patricia Barber, etc.

If you are willing to explore opera (Anna Netrebenko), country (Rosanne Cash), world, or even goth (Evanesence comes to mind), you will get to experience the purity of the female voice in a whole new way.

Good listening, Rich

Alison Krauss - Forget About It (simply amazing SACD!)
KD Lang - Songs from the 49th Parallel (Not Audiophile, but wow!)
Janice Ian - Folk is the New Black

Calgarian

woow, most of suggestion are pretty interesting. Regina Spektor does has a good voice. Eva Cassidy is also great! Any other suggestion?

Katie Melua - Piece by piece . Just can't wait for more of her recordings...

Hey Plato___-- I love The Pretenders, Chrisy has such a voice!!--(not sure I spelled her name correctly)

Tierney Sutton and Linda Ronstadt for me!

I would choose Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro" conducted by Rene Jacobs on Harmonia Mundi. Take your pick from Veronique Gens or Patrizia Ciofi or Angelika Kirschschlager as best female vocalist. They are all outstanding.

Regards, Rich

I pick Regina Spektor's "Begin to Hope" CD. She has a nice voice, and writes quirky, kind of flippant lyrics. I find her vocals and music refreshingly original in a world of copy-cat pretenders. Plus, it's just plain fun to listen to.

I also prefer female vocals...my pick would be Eva Cassidy. I only got to know her music this year but since I was first introduced I have purchased all of her cds. There are so many more but she is the first one I thought of.