Longing Years [CD]

Erin Propp arrives fully formed as a solo artist on The Longing Years, her debut album as a vocalist-pianist and the culmination of a seven-year creative journey. Juno-nominated and WCMA-winning, Propp has long been known across Canada for her empathic vocal presence and her ease within the jazz tradition. Here she expands that voice into something more personal and more searching, writing all eleven songs from behind the piano and recording them with co-producer Joey Landreth (of the Bros. Landreth) and an ensemble that includes bassist Julian Bradford, drummer Fabio Ragnelli, and the Grammy-winning Attacca Quartet, whose string arrangements by Nathan Schram appear on three tracks. The album ranges from the anthemic opening of ""Alert to Glory,"" a setting of Sally Ito's poem for jazz trio, strings, and guitars, to the stark, solo piano prayer that closes the record. In between, Propp moves through folk-inflected confessions, jazz-rooted ballads, and songs about sisterhood, memory, motherhood, and longing that resist easy resolution. Throughout, Propp's voice is the constant, warm and precise, capable of holding grief and humor in the same breath. The Longing Years is a record about the slow, incremental work of becoming an artist and a self, made by someone who did exactly that.