Steve Lipman - Hats Off (2018)

Windsor’s own jazz vocalist Steve Lipman is set to release his latest album Hats Off on November 17th. The album is a collection of well known standards from the Great American Songbook deftly blended with more recent works. Listeners will enjoy a diverse musical palette featuring everything from the reliable “You Make Me Feel So Young” to the hidden gem “The Coffee Song,” and from musical theater hits like “The Sound of Music” to Leonard Cohen’s brooding “Dance Me to the End of Love.” This will be Lipman’s third and most highly anticipated release. “It’s about the things that are most important in life,” Lipman said recently. “It’s about love; all kinds of love: romantic love, love for your family, love of country.”

The album’s title, Hats Off, is the perfect moniker to describe the album’s various layers of meaning for Lipman. In the most straightforward sense, the title describes a figurative tip of the hat to all of the great artists who brought the songbook to life, from Frank Sinatra to Cole Porter. But more importantly the album represents a point of arrival in Lipman’s journey as a musician. Looking back on his early days as a vocalist, Lipman describes his former self as one who yearned to emulate the greats. At the time, he would even perform wearing a black fedora in homage to Sinatra. Since that time, Lipman has studied voice and music theory intensively on a quest not only to find his own voice as a singer, but also as a storyteller. Hats Off marks Lipman’s arrival as a jazz singer in his own right. Today, he is still paying tribute, but the hat is off. He is no longer an imitator. He has found his soul in music.

Hats Off was produced by Lipman and Nate Christy of Six String Orchestra Productions in Easthampton, Massachusetts. Studio-owner Dan Prindle, known in Connecticut for his work with the well known Hartford-area band Rane, contributed most of the arrangements for the album, with one arrangement coming from Nick Borges, a grammy-nominated trumpet player who also played on many of the tracks on the album. Producer Nate Christy’s previous credits include a production credit on the track “Waves of Love,” by Al Jardine and Carl Wilson of the Beach Boys, work with Royston Langston of Space Hog on his track “Love Is a Curious Thing,” and engineering on Larry Dvoskin’s Life Is Strange album. Dvoskin, a frequent collaborator of Christy’s, is a four-time Grammy nominated musician, songwriter, and producer whose songs have sold more than 27 million copies worldwide.