While this is her debut album as leader, Hannah Gill has been on the scene longer than her 26 years might suggest. She moved to New York City fresh out of high school in 2015 and began appearing with local swing and trad jazz bands right away. She also lead a group playing her own original songs, some of which found YouTube success. Her big break came with a pair of viral pop covers for Post Modern Jukebox in 2017, and she has toured the world twice with the band. She has also toured internationally with swing superstar Gordon Webster, who plays piano on this album, and she has recorded with Glenn Crytzer and Vince Giordano, among others.
There is a reason these excellent bandleaders were eager to have her singing for them, her vocal skill and sound is a remarkably natural fit for classic jazz and swing. Hannah Gill sounds to me like a young woman on a 1940s radio quiz show, one you picture as sly and attractive even over the airwaves. She has that crisp Ivy League voice of the era, rich, with a casual confidence that, as those women aged, became associated with the smoky sensuality of 1967’s Mrs. Robinson. It is the classic Mid-Atlantic accent, the movie star voice, more humorously remembered as “grandma’s phone voice.” Many singers of the standard repertoire attempt it, whether by nature or design, or a little of both, Hannah Gill has it.
On Everybody Loves a Lover she put
