'I Hear The Story in The Music': Kate McGarry Reveals Her Secret To Interpreting Songs

NEW YORK (Top40 Charts/ Palmetto Records) - As 'the best of a new breed of jazz vocalists' (Philadelphia Inquirer), Kate McGarry hops across musical boundaries on her new CD 'The Target' (Palmetto) with a repertoire of songs that includes everything from 'It Might as Well Be Spring' by Rogers and Hammerstein to 'Sister Moon' by Sting. But when choosing what songs to perform, McGarry confesses the songs actually choose her.

'I don't have a wishlist of songs that I want to sing someday' says McGarry. 'It's more like the songs appear to me, the way the answer does in one of those Magic 8 Ball toys, when I'm ready to sing them. I hear the story in the music, and that's what drives me to sing a song. For me, performance is more about telling a story than singing. You have to get at what's real for you.'

So far, the technique has worked. 'The Target' was chosen as one of Downbeat's top CDs of 2007, and Norman Provizer recently wrote of McGarry in the Rocky Mountain News that she 'places her own 'beyond category' stamp on the material [she chooses], a distinction that most reminds me of the late Eva Cassidy... There is a similarity between McGarry's and Cassidy's vocal sound, as well as in the wide range of material that both cover.'