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BEATA PATER Red B & B Records BB0418

1. Butterfly
2. Ahmar
3. Bachnova
4. Sir Doug of Edwards
5. Big Red
6. Bis
7. Lady Carmen
8. Praise
9. Rany Bombay
10. Red Clay
11. Tragic Beauty
12. Vermelho.

Beata Pater - Vocals, violin
Mark Little - Keyboards
Aaron Germain - Bass
André Bush, Carl Lockett, Celia Malheiros - Guitars
Darius Babazedeh - Saxophone, flute
Ranzel Merritt - Drum
Raul Ramirez - Percussion
Kush Khanna - Tabla
Tom Peron - Trumpet
Buca Necak - Contrabass
Doug Edwards - Voice

 

Beata Pater is a singer who started attending music school in Poland when she was six and learnt to play the violin. After finishing her education in England, Beata spent ten years in Japan, performing as a session singer and teaching at the Yamaha School of Music. She moved to the USA in the 1990s, where this album was recorded in Berkeley, California in 2011.

She reminds me of Tania Maria, with a vigorous vocal style, although she sings wordlessly. It becomes tiresome after a while just to hear her singing "Ya-ya" and "Ba-ba". So the main redeeming feature is the backing band, which includes a lyrical saxist, rocky guitars, a steaming bassist and a Latin-American-style pianist. Many tracks have a Latin-American beat, which increases the resemblance to Tania Maria, while several others have a jazz-funk rhythm.

The album opens with Herbie Hancock's Butterfly, which is notable for Darius Babazadeh's twisting sax solo. All the other tunes were written by Beata - often in collaboration with keyboardist Mark Little (who also composed Lady Carmen and Praise on his own), except for Marek Balata's Bachnova (a tender bossa nova) and Freddie Hubbard's Red Clay (on which Beata gets rather raucous).

Sir Doug of Edwards includes a nice bass guitar solo; Big Red has a swinging piano solo; and both Bis and Rany Bombay are distinguished by their sax solos from Darius Babazadeh. Mark Little contributes a neat piano solo to his own Lady Carmen and to Vermelho, which he co-wrote with Beata Pater.

This is another of those albums where the backing musicians are more worthy of attention than the headlining singer.

Tony Augarde
www.augardebooks.co.uk

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