Liane Carroll – Up and Down (Quiet Money Recordings 2011)

British singer/pianist Liane Carroll comes from the opposite end of the jazz-vocals galaxy to Gretchen Parlato. She's a powerful, soul-inflected performer with an Ella Fitzgerald-like improv athleticism and an emotional frankness on ballads. But this engagingly straight-jazzy session is the first to match her expressive skills with the resources that celebrity singers get – star guest soloists, strings and brass arrangements – and guidance from Grammy-nominated trumpeter/producer James McMillan. Carroll occasionally overblows on vocal twists, as she does against the orchestral arrangement on What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life, but Tom Waits's Take Me Home is a delicately soulful miniature, and the Christmas song Some Children See Him and the closing I Can Let Go Now are unadorned revelations. Jubilant swingers turn up all over the set, of course, including a sparky duet with saxist Kirk Whalum on Moanin', a hurtling Witchcraft and a terrific merger of Old Devil Moon and Killer Joe. But the 82-year-old Kenny Wheeler's flawlessly poetic flugelhorn dialogue with Carroll on Turn Out the Stars might just be the most magical moment. (John Fordham/The Guardian)