Press and Customer reviews
"Chanson - The Space in Between"
"Possessing nothing as dull as orthodox talent...
an English Piaf is just what the world needs."
Alan Clayson, Record Buyer and Music Collector.
"This is a stunning album. Barb Jungr's true
voice and emotion have been given wings and fly."
Suzanne Chawner, Women in Music Magazine.
"The renditions are so sensitively handled that
only the most fastidious puritsts would object."
Clive Davis, The Sunday Times.
"Barb Jungr has found her niche."
Sandra Lawrence, The Singer,
October cover feature.
Barb's interpretation of Brel's Marieke is so beautiful and haunting it's hard not to fall instantly in love with it."
Michael Hootman, G Scene Magazine.
Perrier Award winner translates Familiar into Extraordinary
Barb Jungr, regularly lauded at the Edinburgh Festival and winner of at least one Perrier Award for wowing the critics there, completes unique translations of very recognisable French songs. Used as we are to hearing them in their original format, perhaps even knowing them by heart, it is a shock to the unconscious to realise the poetics weaseling their way into our hearts in the language of our infancy. Her vocals - deep, soaring, open-throated, altogether abandoned in some parts - are quite astonishing for their tricky ability to move us from casual listening to causal emotion. I give her five Stars: the only thing better is to catch her live...
A music fan from California.
Barb Jungr - Queen of Cabaret
This must be one of the best CD's of all time! You just get drawn into the music. Barb Jungr's voice immediately makes you fall in love. Quite an achievement.
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Jacques Brel
Edith Piaf
A stunning and powerful CD of songs with a Parisian theme, taking in love, death, lost hope, and more death. Barb Jungr's voice is husky and aching, and the words she sings strike deep into your soul. Jacques Brel classics sit alongside Elvis Costello, bittersweet tales of French street girls rub shoulders with yearning for an island paradise: this is one of the most moving collections I have ever heard. Personal sleeve notes add more depth to the heartfelt songs, and poetry and music glide hand in hand down deep into the darkest areas of human experience. Imagine Nina Simone banished to a deep dark dungeon with no hope and you come close to the sound here. Utterly utterly wondrous.
A music fan.
Barb Jungr used to be the support act for Julian Clary. He described her as "a one-woman emotional enema and not for the faint-hearted." Indeed. Ten years later, though, she has developed into a fully-fledge classy jazzy laydee with her album Chanson, the space in between. All of the material here deals with the mythic, romantic notions of Paris and love that we all know so well. As Jungr points out, this Paris probably only ever existed in the imagination but is no less real for that. There are the usual jazz standards given a refreshing makeover such as "I love Paris", "No Regrets" and "Ne me quitte pas." There are also forays into less well known but equally rewarding territory. The incredible lyricist Fran Landesmann has translated and reworked Préverts stunning "Cri du Coeur" into chansons answer to "I will survive".
Meanwhile Robb Johnsons paean to Parisien prostitutes, "Sunday Moning, St. Denis", is arranged by accordian virtuoso Kim Burton and given gorgeously complex Albanian inflections that are only too fitting considering that many of the girls on Paris streets today are from Former Yugoslavia. The arrangements create that sense of mythic Paris and mive it on to somewhere new that sings of darkness and despair as well as roses and romance. Of course none of this could be achieved if it wasn't all held together by that voice. "She is a smoky, sexy singer who can take you from a whisper to a wail in one slick step and breathe new life and soul into songs that you've heard a hundred times. Indeed, as she sings in "Cri du coeur" - "It's not just my voice that is singing, there are voices from the past, there are the desperate and the gay, the siren song of yesterday." Barb Jungr opens her mouth and you are in love.
OUTCAST MAGAZINE
Barb Jungr
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