Kathy Tugman & The David Walters Quartet - Robin On The Frost (2011)

Kathy Tugman's first album in seven years is at last out and the wait was certainly worth it. "Robin on the Frost" is a collection of seven covers and six originals and is meant to be representative of a set played by this working band. Kathy and the David Walters Quartet have been playing regularly since the release of their last album, "Almost Off the Dial" in 2004. That togetherness allows the band to tackle this set of tunes, which range in style from jazz standards to blues to familiar and not-so-familiar pop tunes, giving all of the music that somethiing that makes it jazz. Check out the cooking remakes of Carole King's "I Feel the Earth Move" and the Beatles' "Things We Said Today." Then there is the heart-breaking beauty of great ballads like "My Foolish Heart" and "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?" The band swings hard through "I Love Being Here With You" and then waltzes and swings "There Will Never Be Another You."

Clicking nicely with those wonderful songs are six originals that themselves touch on swing, Latin, blues, the ballad and straight-ahead pop. Thematically, the album traces what Paul Simon once called "the arc of a love affair," moving from the excitement of love found, to the salad days of a relationship, to the dawning realization that the affair may be ending, to regret and woe at lost love, to a final acceptance of the end, and even gratitude for what was had and is now lost. This last comes through in touching revival of a Ray Davies tune from the Sixties - "Days."

Kathy and the band play six sets over two nights each month at a jazz club and have done so for five years. As was said earlier, this is a working band and this new album is a work of love and art, but always with the feel of jazz. After all, our motto, often repeated, is "Jazz is the best, but live jazz is better." This record - recorded in a studio, but mostly live in the studio - is a fine sampling of just how true that motto is.