Media - Live reviews

media

"Australian newcomer Anita Wardell made a good impression...Her pitch and timing are reliable and she scat sings in an unselfconscious, musicianly way..." Review of Ronnie Scott's appearance, Jack Massarik, Evening Standard, April 15, 1999.

"Wardell has her own sort of impish, even puckish, scat that trills away over her whole range like a carefully conceived instrumental solo, and I found it enchanting...She stunned the audience into spellbound silence..." Concert review Pizza on the Park, London, Simon Becker, Boz Magazine.

"Who but Anita Wardell would deserve an instrumental opening to warm up the atmosphere? A very special way to welcome the Australian singer to Lescar... With a voice full of warmth she wove her way through bebops, ballads, and bossanova, not missing an opportunity to share her radiant pleasure with the audience..." Review of concert at the Lescar Hotel, Herve Perez , Sheffield Times.

"...Anita made her debut at the Fairway where jazz fans described her as 'the genuine article'..." Welwyn and Hatfield Times, August 1998.

"Anita Wardell...is currently one of the most exciting and original exponents of the art of vocal improvisation." Martin Lilleker , Sheffield Telegraph, January 24, 1997

Anita Wardell Quartet "For many, the most creative jazz singer operating in London, this sweet toned Australian chooses superior songs and can improvise with the best." Jack Massarik, Hot Tickets Magazine, Evening Standard, January 1999.

"A sensitive singer who likes to scat as well as invest in the lyric and melody. Her approach is clear in the title of her album, 'Straight Ahead'. She's recently been a big hit in a season at Ronnie Scott's London." Edinburgh Festival Magazine, 1999.

"Pure bebop singing, displaying a musical mastery..." Peter Hepple, Stage and Television Today newspaper.

Anita Wardell Quartet "Anita Wardell is a singer who takes no prisoners. The Australian vocalist is an uncompromising exponent of bebop and has won a cult following among her colleagues in London during her time here. Think of her, if you like, as the female equivalent of Mark Murphy." Clive Davis, The Times, London , August 2001.

"Word is spreading about Anita Wardell. Guilford-born Adelaide-raised, she gives ballads an unsentimental glow and scat-sings with rare musical intelligence.

Last night she and impassioned tenorist Benn clatworthy- another well- travelled Brit, based in Los Angeles- unveiled their new quintet in a basement boite behind Les Misérables at Cambridge Circus. Normally the haunt of wannabe vocalists, cash- strapped cognoscenti and stray tourists, the place was packed. Anita was ready, in her bop-beret jauntily in position and a standing ovation still ringing in her ears from delegates at last week's International Jazz Educators' conference in New York. After a couple of warm-up songs by host Paul Pace, Benn burst in. “Softly As In a Morning Sunrise” was devoured in his hungriest vintage-Coltrane style, and “It's You Or No-One raced even faster, so Anita sensibly entered at a pace that allowed drummer Martin Drew, bassist Paul Morgan and pianist Robin Aspland to get their breath back. Her leisurely scat chorus was full of shapely phrases each one giving the surrounding spaces extra significance. Even sweeter was “If You Never Come to Me, a Jobim line that entitles her new album. gliding over Drew's crisp bossa beat, Clatworthy's flute meshed sympathetically with Wardell's own flute-like ideas. It's good these two world travellers should have joined forces. Jazzwise, they're from the same neck of the woods." Feb 5th 2004 Jack Massarik.