Marianne Solivan - Break's Over (2025)

Featuring the venerable bassist Buster Williams, as well as lauded pianist Brandon McCune and in-demand drummer Jay Sawyer, this triumphal studio effort — Solivan’s sixth in all — further repositions her to a rightfully high perch in contemporary jazz.

“My first time performing with Buster was in the summer of 2019 and it made quite an impact on me,” Solivan says. “I was in awe of his sound and his way of weaving through harmony, it challenged me and led me into areas of the music that I was not familiar with. I knew then that I needed to work with him again and learn as much as I could from the master.”

Described as a “strong, sensuous alto” by The New York Times and “well on her way to being a national treasure” by the Midwest Record, Solivan is widely known for her dynamic range, expressive delivery and astonishing improvisatory acumen.

On 2012’s Prisoner of Love, stated the Ottawa Citizen, “vocalist Marianne Solivan surrounds herself with some A-list, hard-swinging company [and] sounds every bit in the same league as these seasoned accompanists.” Of her 2013 album Spark, JazzTimes proclaimed, “Solivan remains too much a local delicacy. Hopefully… her sophomore release as a leader is prophetically titled, and will at last ignite wider recognition.”

“This is my way of jumping back into the whirlwind of music making in NYC and abroad,” she says of Break’s Over — the follow-up to last June’s Re-Entry. “After the pandemic — and now this post-pandemic time, that feels so strange and volatile — this was for me a push to fully invest myself back into the music with people I love and respect and give it my all.”

The album commences with Betty Carter’s “Open the Door,” which Solivan describes as “one of the first singers that showed me what this music is and can be.”

“It’s a song that makes me feel unbelievably good. I love the lyrics. There’s nothing that I don’t love about it,” Solivan says. “That was my little tip of the hat to the woman who has truly inspired me from the very beginning of learning about this music, and still does today.”

Antônio Carlos Jobim’s “Drifting Through This Maze (Zingaro)” follows. “I’ve been singing this song on and off for 20 years,” Solivan reflects. “It’s an exceptionally difficult melody, but super haunting and beautiful.”

At first, Solivan couldn’t get the Portuguese lyrics under her tongue; with deep reverence toward the original, she penned her own. “Having my own lyrics allowed me to connect deeper to the actual music that Jobim wrote,” she says.

Break’s Over rolls on with Richard Rogers’ “Look No Further.” “If you hear the original Broadway version, it is so square,” Solivan says. But, again, Betty Carter was the spark — as she had given that song her own go.

“We took her idea and blew it up, arrangement wise,” the vocalist continues. “I love the tongue-in-cheek idea of, Your North Star is standing in front of you. If you would just stop for a second, you would notice that it’s right in front of your face. That whole lyric not only tickles me; it definitely suits my personality.”

“Moonlight to You” — music by Marilyn Simpson, lyrics by Nancy King — is a duet between Solivan and pianist McCune. “It’s drop dead gorgeous — the clarity of the lyric, in that moment of needing to wish the person who you’ve just ended a relationship with nothing but the best,” Solivan says.

Solivan wrote the music to “First Desire”; the lyrics are courtesy of the vaunted Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. This stems from an assignment in grad school where poetry was put to music. Of said poem: “That is constantly the struggle,” she explains. “The love affair of your voice being your heart — who you are, how you feel, what allows you to connect with others. What those lyrics mean to me now is wildly different and more potent than they ever did when I wrote the song.”

Solivan retrieved “Spark” from her aforementioned album of the same name. “It's something that always makes me laugh,” she says. “Because I wrote it after having a really amazing kiss with a man — not my best choice of a man, who thankfully didn't last.”

The penultimate track is “We Must Love” — a Randy Weston composition with lyrics courtesy of Solivan, written during the pandemic. “I was trying to parse out how I felt about us going deeper and deeper into madness and turmoil, and losing each other,” Solivan says.

Break’s Over concludes with “The Other Half Of Me” — another duet with McCune, written by Jack Lawrence and Stan Freeman, originally from the 1964 musical I Had a Ball. “Which blows my mind, because it doesn’t have that musical theater feeling at all,” Solivan says. “But if you come to my gigs — if you actually listen to the songs I choose — you will know so much about me.”

Which applies equally to her albums — especially Break’s Over, whose title means what it says.

Marianne Solivan – voice
Brandon McCune – piano
Buster Williams – bass
Jay Sawyer – drums