Giacomo Gates is the complete vocal stylist. He’s often credited as a contemporary Eddie Jefferson, but with his full-bodied baritone and blazing inventiveness he sounds like a cross between Billy Eckstine and Kurt Elling. As bracing an innovator as he is an interpreter, Gates transforms his latest recording into a cornucopia of delicacies that extends from the smooth and mellow to the razor-sharp.
For his Savant Records’ debut, Gates has chosen to perform a stimulating selection of songs by the influential and controversial Gil Scott-Heron. Scott-Heron made music that reflected the turbulence, uncertainty and increasing pessimism of the early 70s, merging the soul and jazz and drawing on an oral poetry tradition that reached back to the blues and forward to hip-hop.
This material is tailor-made for Gates, who without question is the best-suited performer to deliver the satirical and insightful lyrics of a true American original, Gil Scott-Heron.
This is one of those CDs that you can put on and forget it; let it play all afternoon and you will find yourself loving it the entire time!