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Bett Butler Returns to the Elephant Room with Chamber Jazz Trio

Posted by Bett Butler on 7/26/2008, 11:11 am
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Award-Winning Jazz Songwriter Bett Butler returns to Elephant Room with Chamber Jazz Trio Sunday, August 17

Jazz singer/songwriter and pianist Bett Butler, whose alcohol-tinged tale of claustrophobic depression “When Love Has Left the Room” won first-place in the jazz category of the 2006 International Songwriting Competition, returns to Austin's Elephant Room on Sunday, August 17, at 9:30 pm with the Chamber Jazz Trio. Her sophomore release Myths & Fables is in heavy rotation on Texas jazz stations. San Antonio's KRTU Sound Check calls Myths & Fables, “a must-have for jazz fans.”

As an asthmatic child gasping for air amid the toxic refineries of Houston, Bett Butler was largely confined to her room, absorbing the music from her father’s bizarre and eclectic record collection, the dark stories of Edgar Allen Poe, and the freakish fantasies of the Brothers Grimm, all of which made their way into her songwriting. Her original songs, cinematic vignettes inhabited by offbeat characters and contradictions, have invited comparisons to everyone from to Edith Piaf to Laurie Anderson to Billie Holiday to Ella Fitzgerald to Etta James. Honing her vocal and performance chops onstage in regional theaters and rowdy Riverwalk roadhouses for two decades, she brings "an actor’s mindset to her vocal performances, routinely changing the timbre of her voice to suit the character she’s playing," according to Gilbert Garcia of The Current. Frequently using her voice as a musical instrument, she borrows from blues, gospel, flamenco, gypsy, and Mid-Eastern influences, and has a unique scatting style incorporating vocals with unison piano lines.

In the Chamber Jazz Trio, she’s joined by two formidable musical partners:

Bassist/composer Joël Dilley, Butler's producer and spouse and a bassist with an unerring sense of rhythm, provides a strong foundation for the drummerless trio, while his arco and pizzicato solos take on all the colors and emotions of the human voice. "He deftly translates all the colors, sounds, and feelings associated with his life experiences into music….His rich bass is the stuff of heart beats, ocean waves, and other natural earth rhythms,” writes Hannah Castellaw of WomanSpace.

The "gnomic Buddha of Brass," respected jazz educator Cecil Carter, plays trumpet, flugelhorn, and occasional piano. Onstage, when not in serene contemplation, he's weaving meticulous contrapuntal lines around his partners or telling his side of the musical story with a solo voice ranging from sweetly soulful to angrily piercing to ironically humorous.

Join Bett Butler with the Chamber Jazz Trio at the Elephant Room for an evening of music that Roberto Bonazzi of the San Antonio Express News calls, "an ensemble that always sounds new....Their jazz conversations are...hip, exciting and entertaining.... replenishing the standards with passion, innovation and wit.”

For CDs, photos, press kits, and additional information, please e-mail bett@mandalamusic.com, or call 210.227-JAZZ (5299).

Who: Bett Butler with the Chamber Jazz Trio
What: Acoustic Jazz with an Edge
When: Sunday, August 17, 2008, 9:30 pm-1:30 am
Where: The Elephant Room
315 Congress Ave
Austin, TX 78701
512.473.2279
No cover
Web:http://www.elephantroom.com

For interviews, CDs, photos, please contact:
Bett Butler - Mandala Music Production
Phone: 210.227-JAZZ (5299)
E-mail: bett@mandalamusic.com
Web: http://www.bettbutler.com http://www.myspace.com/bettbutler http://www.joeldilley.com http://www.myspace.com/joeldilley