Café Blue stands out with its daring blend of jazz standards, originals, and poetic settings—from Maya Angelou to avant-garde inspirations. Mourning Grace, for instance, sets Angelou’s haunting line “Will you have the grace to mourn for me?” against an evolving musical backdrop, culminating in Barber’s emotionally charged vocal ascent.

“Constantinople”, from 1998’s Modern Cool, is the most extreme example. Over a shifting Middle Eastern groove fueled by Mark Walker’s percussion work, Barber keens wordlessly and then gives trumpeter Dave Douglas several beautiful minutes to vamp in Sketches of Spain style; when she comes back in, long vocal lines punctuated by staccato guitar work by John McLean, it’s so haunting and perfect that you forget that she doesn’t actually play piano at all on the track.

A bold and affecting song cycle. Patricia Barber, after receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2003, embarked on one of her most ambitious projects—Mythologies, a compelling 11-track song cycle inspired by the characters of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Each composition musically fleshes out figures from ancient myth, blending narrative depth with sophisticated compositional structure.

Modern Cool pulses with vivid character sketches of modern life—starting with "Touch of Trash," a sharp portrait of a woman “just a culture short of class.” The album unfolds in a low-lit, nocturnal jazz world, where Barber’s smoky voice and John McLean’s ethereal guitar evoke flickering streetlights and inner monologues.

Split is a newly remastered edition of Patricia Barber‘s first album originally released on Floyd Records in 1989. Koch reissued the album on Stereo CD in 2004. It has been off the market for over 20 years.
This is the first album in which we hear her first versions of standards she revisits in later albums (“Early Autumn” on “Higher”, “Easy.

When Café Blue was released by Premonition Records in 1994, two things happened. A “maverick” jazz artist began a sustained, inventive career and a significant audiophile release put the label on the map. Barber’s father, a musician with Glenn Miller, had instilled a respect for jazz arrangement. After paying her dues on the Chicago music scene, her relentless performance schedule garnered an enthusiastic cult following. It didn’t take long for critics to recognize the quirky stylistic approach to jazz. Relying on original material and a mix of pop standards, Barber created albums of musical vision and poetic flair.

A Distortion of Love from 1992 showcases Patricia Barber the consummate jazz pianist as well as the chanteuse with the husky voice which has become her trademark of late. There are some very interesting purely instrumental tracks on this album, especially the hard driving McCoy Tyner-ish "Subway Station No. 5," the impressionistic "Parts Parallels," and "Yet Another in a Long Series of Yellow Car" which has a Joe Zawinul/Weather Report feel to it.

Over 190 minutes of music featuring “Best of” tracks culled from Barber’s five records for Premonition during the 1994-2002 period
5 Bonus tracks never before released on CD including “My Funny Valentine,” “Fool on a Hill,” “You Are My Sunshine,” “So What,” and “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” With Barber, featured artists include Charlie Hunter, Marc Johnson, Dave Douglas, Joey Baron, Adam Nussbaum, among others
3 CDs broken up into distinct listening experiences. Programs include: Patricia Barber Pop Songs, Patricia Barber Standards, Patricia Barber Originals
Classic Audiophile recordings High-Resolution Re-mastering from original analog sources Extensive liner notes by noted jazz critic Neil Tesser
Beautiful Slip case packaging by Steve Byram including original watercolor cover Patricia Barber, The Premonition Years: 1994-2002 chronicles Barber’s 8 year association with the Chicago based indy-label Premonition Records.

The mix here is a Cole Porter cocktail, a dry martini but with a touch of jalapeno instead of olive. And while there are strains of melancholy, as Barber says in the notes: "Cole Porter never wrote a song that said 'I'm miserable.'" That jalapeno heat comes from the evocative jazz arrangements and solos, especially those of guest tenor saxophonist Chris Potter (on five of the 13 tracks) and acoustic and electric guitarist Neal Alger, as well as the singer's incisive piano. It's also a literal mix, as Barber stirs in three of her own songs, ones consciously influenced by the sophisticated Porter oeuvre.

A prime example is the title track, where Barber paints the end of a love affair with subtly stated allusions to destruction: the erosion of edifices; a bloody road accident. The lines are more akin to poetry than conventional song lyrics, as she depicts “the crumbling of tall castles built / on kisses and blood / and dreams so like sand.” The song’s reprise compares “the sound of a heart breaking” to “the sound of / the red on the road” – a devastatingly effective mélange of synesthetic imagery. Aided by a raw, forceful guitar solo, the performance illuminates a counter-intuitive realization about loss:
“It just struck me, as it does everyone who experiences great loss, that on the outside, no one can tell,” Barber explains. “You go to the grocery store, and everything’s the same, which is shocking. It struck me that this is the sound of a heart breaking: silence. You’re alone. And I felt that this was an interesting juxtaposition, since the sound of a heart breaking should be the loudest, screamiest, shriekiest combination of sounds there could be.”

On Smash, her January 22, 2013 debut on Concord Jazz, Patricia Barber reiterates her unique position in modern music as a jazz triple-threat – imaginative pianist, startling vocalist, and innovative composer (international release dates may vary). With a new band and a dozen new compositions, she also continues her two-decade crusade to retrieve the ground that jazz musicians long ago ceded to pop and rock: the realm of the intelligent and committed singer-songwriter, tackling even familiar subjects (like love and loss) with a nuance and depth beyond the limits of the Great American Songbook.