With: Hans Sturm , on bass; Tom Larson, on keyboards; and Chris Varga, on percussion

Jackie Allen released her 10th CD, My Favorite Color, on May 13, 2014. Long known for the enticing smoky quality of her voice and the natural sincerity of her interpretations, My Favorite Color is Jackie’s long anticipated follow-up studio
release to her 2006 Blue Note recording, Tangled.

My Favorite Color features two originals and eight standards, reaching from the thirties into the seventies. Harold Arlen and Truman Capote’s Sleepin’ Bee swings on tiptoe, replete with its verse and a perfectly melodic Ben Lewis piano solo. An organ and horn infused romp propels Joe Zawinul’s Mercy, Mercy, Mercy into a hip soul frenzy. Jackie’s arrangement of Gershwin’s My Man’s Gone Now is reimagined as a dramatic modal voyage, featuring an eloquent bowed bass solo by Hans Sturm and a stirring John Moulder electric guitar solo. In classic ballad style, Oscar Levant and Mark Heyman’s Blame It On My Youth opens with a goregous extended acoustic guitar introduction that folds gently into Jackie’s profoundly sincere and wistful reading. Hendrix’ Manic Depression conjures up Bitches Brew with a Miles-esque muted horn solo by Tito Carillo jousting with Ben Lewis’ organ jabs and Jackie’s Dante’s Inferno scatting.

My Favorite Color is on the 2015 Grammy ballot !!!!

“Allen’s voice is both crystalline and soulful; waxing romantic and poetic …This is four-hundred-dollar-a-bottle jazz — no cheap imitation.” (Rolling Stone)

Jackie’s extraordinary talent has taken her on multiple tours of Europe, Morocco, Brazil, China and Taiwan. Nationally she has toured both coasts and in-between appearing in Los Angeles at Catalina’s, San Francisco at Yoshi’s, San Diego at Humphrey’s, and New York City at The Blue Note and The Josef Papp Public Theater.
She was recently featured on A Prairie Home Companion (2014) where she gave Garrison Keillor a “Torch Singing” lesson . She has been a featured artist with the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic in Chicago’s Millennium Park and Auditorium Theater for Ella Fitzgerald’s 95 Celebration.

international festivals in Detroit, Chicago, Paris, the Hague, Stuttgart, Edinburgh,
Bologna, Beijing, Hong Kong, Thessaloniki, Sao Paulo and more.