Safe Places by Esther Bennett

It’s March 2020 and the government announce a national lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic that has gripped much of the world. What's a singer to do? Write of course! What is a singer without the necessary accompanying skills with which to write the harmonies of a song to do? Well, to begin with, I thought it an ideal time to do what every self-respecting jazz singer should do at some point in their career and that is to write a contrafact - a musical composition built using the chord progression of a pre-existing song, but with a new melody and arrangement.

I chose two well known jazz standards; All of Me written by Gerald Marks & Seymour Simons and Well You Needn't written by Thelonious Monk, upon which to paint new stories. Only one of these is on the EP (the Monk composition now entitled Yellow Label Stuff) but I had an enormous amount of fun working on both.
A lengthy and complicated, possibly a bit too fussy and clever process, but I was really pleased with the results. Armed with the knowledge that songwriting possibilities were now endless due to the thousands of songs available to me from “The American Songbook" alone, I would have carried on in the same vein, were it not for one day coming across a recording of an instrumental composition, written and performed by my good friend and colleague, pianist Terence Collie - a beautiful composition in 5/4 entitled End of Summer.

I knew immediately that I wanted to write lyrics to this piece. Terence was happy for me to do so and suggested that we then record the new song. I told him that I had a few more original tunes - those that I'd just written, another in the pipeline and a couple that I'd written with other musicians over ten years ago, to which he responded "then why don't we do an EP?"
And here we are....

As experienced performers, we both know and have worked with some of the best musicians in the UK and in Europe. It wasn't difficult, therefore, to select a band who would bring these compositions to their most full and beautiful life.
We chose the traditional jazz trio format with the addition of percussion, saxes and flute to give just the right flavours that the swing, bossa, funk, latin and 5/4 grooves required. The tracks were recorded individually and remotely by each musician, as were the vocals. Terence Collie mixed, engineered and produced the album adding subtle vintage synth pads for textures on the opening two songs which add to giving the album a very distinctive and personal sound.

Esther is one of the jazz scene's most highly respected and widely loved vocalists, juxtaposing sensitivity with a sparky sense of humour
A singer of jazz standards, original material and more, Esther has performed at some of the UK and European jazz scene's top music venues and festivals, working along side an impressive list of jazz musicians.

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