Halloween jazz is hard to find. That’s probably because the explosion of popular Christmas material coincided with jazz ubiquity in the first half of the 20th century but it was the rock era before all that many “Halloween Songs” had crept in.
Hannah Gill is making up for lost time, she is releasing a Volume 2 of Spooky Jazz on October 4th and has a 2022 live album to compliment 2020’s Vol. 1. Enough spooky stuff to fill your party.
I am in the unusual situation of having not heard the upcoming release, but based on watching her mature as an artist these last several years, and the NYC all star lineup she brings to the new one, I predict it will have bones rattling for years to come. She has grown into one of our most captivating young vocalists. Strong, crisply enunciated, forceful, but still bluesy.
Looking back Hannah Gill was the last profile I wrote for this paper, the article ran in April 2020, right as everything shut down. It was a spunky tale of her moving to NYC fresh out of high school and working her way into becoming a first call singer for jazz and swing bands. She sang for Glenn Crytzer, Ricky Alexander, and many more since. Today you can most easily catch her live with the Hot Toddies, who are a bit of an all star group with a regular New York City shows full of dancers. I was surprised that she only released her first record earlier this year, Everybody Lov
