The advantage of globalization is that you find good music made in the vicinity of your country. With Deborah J. Carter's second album this means that it was recorded in Germany's neighbouring country the Netherlands and it's such a good album like you would expect from an US American jazz singer like Carmen Lundy, Diane Reeves or Nneena Freelon.
'Round Moonlight focuses loosely around romantic and even bitter moments of the moonlight hours and contains a well chosen mixture of original compositions (co-written by Deborah herself) and some cover versions. The standard line-up is the classical trio of piano (Coen Molenaar), bass (Mark Zandveld) and drums (Enrique Firpi) spiced up with guest musicians like Frits Landesbergen on vibes, Leonardo Amuedo on acoustic guitar or Tom Beek on saxophone. And of course there's Deborah's clear and beautiful voice on top of all songs.
The album starts with a cover version of Moonlight (from the Sabrina motion picture), a pleasant slightly swinging jazz song with a nice acoustic guitar.
The title song, 'Round Moonlight, was written by Deborah Carter and her pianist Coen Molenaar and is a great ballad with fine instrumentation by the trio line-up.
Michael Frank's Monk's New Tune features some great vibes by Frits Landesbergen and never ever have lyrics like 'I'm drinking Mai-Tai's with pink umbrellas' sounded better.
Frits and his vibes can be heard again on Moonflower (which he co-wrote with Deborah), a very good after hours ballad.
Carmen Lundy's The Lamp Is Low gets a fine remake including some fine scatting by Deborah.
Another original, Feels Like Summer (Summer Nocturne), sounds very interesting due to some additional percussion and udu by Jeroen de Rijk giving this track a little exotic feeling.
From summer to autumn with Autumn Nocturne, another fine cover version that just fits perfect to the overall mood of this album. Add to these seven mentioned songs seven songs more like Wintertime (that's just Deborah and piano), a cover of Sting's Sister Moon (with a nice organ this is finally a version of a Sting song I like) and Henry Mancini's Moon River (from Breakfast At Tiffany's), here called La Luna and sung in Spanish. Deborah really adds something unique to this old chestnut.
With competent musicians, a great singer and a fine mixture of originals with (not so obvious) cover version 'Round Moonlight is really a great and pleasant album that any lover of female jazz singers should have.