BARB JUNGR: ENGLAND FIRST LADY OF JAZZ AND CABARET

Let's see what the international critics wrote about this mesmerizing diva of world cabaret. Maximillien de Lafayette in the April Issue of the London Monthly Herald, wrote: "Ms Jungr's  career as a pop and jazz singer stretches back to the early 80s. She is a veteran of world music. To many cabaret lovers and critics, Ms Barb Jungr is "Britain's answer to Ute Lemper". To many others, Barb is " Queen of the Musical Cabaret of Britain". All lead to the same citadel: The universal shrine of music. The citadel where Ms Jungr has already secured a historical place, a throne for her laurel, legendary talent and the brightest/smartest cabaret repertoire ever delivered by a contemporary singer in Britain. Barb is powerful. Strikingly intelligent. Warmly intellectual. Passionately fashioned into music within stimulating dialogues and electrifying persona on stage. She is perfect for Cabaret. She is made for it. She is CABARET HERSELF! Watching Barb and listening to Barb give you the audio visual and emotional sensations that you are on the set of Godard. Fellini or Vittorio di Sica movie set.  And when the director suspends "action" you leave the stage set to engage yourself into a dialogue with Edith Piaf, Simone Signoret, Proust, Kafka, Weill and the most colorful characters of early Parisian Cabaret. All these fabrics, nuances and intricate pieces of the world of cabaret and the magnetizing personalities who inhabited it are today, dots, ingredients, shadows and lights, whispers and stories of the superbly crafted world of cabaret of Barb Jungr. This woman is the most intelligent and emotionally honest cabaret artiste in the business.  A perfect musical and philosophical unison between Jacques Brel, Edith Piaf, Aragon, Prevert, Eluard  and Barbara create the visage and soul of a sublime idea; a concept; a melodrama visualization on stage; a presence... "Un je ne sais Quoi?" And the sarcastic spiritual poet would scream with Sacha Guitry "Et Dieu Crea La Femme"...and God would "dare to create" a femme and place her on stage to sing for him  and to talk to her intelligently. He would.  He created such a marvelous woman: He created Barb Jungr."

Reviews Waterloo Sunset - CD’s and shows
Album of the year in the Birmingham Sunday Mercury

Mark Shenton wrote in The Stage, 3rd June, 2004 "Anyone who has seen Barb Jungr - a youthful veteran of the London jazz and club circuit - in the past already knows about her rich, expressive voice, interpretive passion, illuminating repertoire and intimate rapport both with the material and the audience. 

 But her latest show, which celebrates the release of her most recent album, Waterloo Sunset, and from which much of her new stage material is drawn, is startling for both its emotional intensity and rich musicality. They are qualities that reminded me of Broadway's Betty Buckley, though without the show tune distractions or over-earnestness.  As I watched and listened with genuine, rapt awe, it dawned on me in one of those spine-tingling realisations that she might just be the best cabaret singer we have got in Britain today. It is to do with trust and communication, as much as it is with inherent musicality.  There is a reason for her to be here and it is not just to sound pretty.  Like Buckley, she makes each song into a self-contained drama that has something to say.  In other words, she is communicating not just sound but spirit.It is what the great artists always do and you notice it even more potently live than you do from a studio recording.  For now there is no tweaking of dials, but raw, unbridled passion.  And in a programme of torch songs new and old, she sets the place aflame.  With material eclectically drawn from Dylan and Costello to Ray Davies and Jungr herself, the great playing and arrangements of Adrian York invaluably accompany her."

Ken Hunt, in the Record Collector, April 2004, wrote "Word went out that Barb Jungr’s album of Dylan covers Every Grain Of Sand (2002), sold impressively. Her third album of interpretations for Linn meanders (without wishing to sound negative) through “feelings masked by other emotions, deceit, masks and outsiders”. Periodically, circus and clown themes rise to the surface. Jungr’s knack lies in imbuing even the highly familiar with new insights, as with Richard Thompson’s ‘The Great Valerio’; or maybe only half turns rather than new twists on themes, as with her cover of the Ray Davies song that lends its name to album’s title. Otherwise, she tackles the Everly Brothers’ ‘Cathy’s Clown’ and Dylan’s ‘High Water (For Charlie Patton)’ and ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ (jugglers and clowns, slight return) before signing off with a flourish with Steve Miller’s ‘The Joker’. The song that leaves the most indelible mark is her and Christine Collister’s ‘Written In The Dark Again’ , appropriately, since it addresses the philosophical concept, concern or conceit of what lingers when a relationship is over. And for anybody to tackle ‘Waterloo Sunset’, they must be touched or divine. Barb Jungr pulls it off. Ergo, she must be both."

David Hurst, in the Showbusiness, USA March 2004, wrote "One of Britain’s most celebrated singers, Barb Jungr’s appearances in New Yorkare few and far between for those of us who have discovered her captivating uniqueness. For that reason, her limited engagement that concluded March at Mama Rose’s was mandatory viewing for the initiated and new acolytes alike. Celebrating the release of her new CD, Waterloo Sunset, Jungr didn’t disappoint. Her show was an exciting evening of eclectic material that proved once again that cabaret can accommodate pop music with ease when handled by a performer with style and substance. And Jungr’s got style and substance to burn. Pulling off songwriters as disparate as Bob Dylan, Richard Thomas and Ray Davies with passion, originality and flair is no mean feat, but Jungr manages it with an ease that’s laudable. A distinctive artist who clearly knows who she is, Jungr is a formidable actress who makes excellent eye contact with her audience before disarming them with a dramatic gesture that would seem ridiculous in lesser hands. Her voice, influenced by late 1950’s jazz icons, is a mellifluous amalgam of a young Bette Midler and Janis Joplin with a little Rickie Lee Jones thrown in on the side. With a quick vibrato, it’s an original sound and seems tailor-made for her repertoire, especially a devastating reading of Charles deForest’s "When Do The Bells Ring For Me." Amazingly, Jungr’s also a natural comic with patter that’s deliciously funny. Watch for her return to Mama Rose’s in mid-June and discover a singer who knows what she’s doing!"

Continues next