Perla Batalla sings Cohen

[jarkko]

Perla’s Live Shows in October:
Thursday Oct 24 & Friday Oct 25 / 8:00 PM
Perla Batalla Sings the Leonard Cohen Songbook
Special Guest: Sylvie Simmons, Author “I’m Your Man”
Sunset Center Carmel, San Carlos at 9th - Carmel, CA
Tickets & Info: www.sunsetcenter.org

[sturgess66]

http://www.montereycountyweekly.com/ent ... f6878.html

Peaking Perla Batalla gives new life to Leonard Cohen at Sunset Center Studio 105.
Perl-fect


After five years as a backup singer for Leonard Cohen, Perla Batalla has taken center stage, and her gritty vocals transform Sunset Center into an intimate jazz club.

Posted: Thursday, October 24, 2013 12:00 am

Margaux Galli

Perla Batalla’s voice is a rip-roaring powerhouse of sultriness. It’s not pretty, per se, but it is gritty, earthy and deep. She peppers her vocals with sparkling highs, demonstrating impressive range – and a diversity of influences, from Mexican folk melodies to power ballads to Latin-inspired rhythms. So it goes when dad’s a singer and disc jockey and mom owns a Spanish record store. She has also worked with musicians such as K.D. Lang, The Gypsy Kings and Jennifer Warnes. But she knows what really hits home for her.

“It was always the gutsy, full-throated singers that inspired me,” she says. “So when I sing, I want to give it all.”

Batalla has done that in establishing a keen sense of musicianship and independence, composing and arranging her own original songs. But before that she was a backup singer for the celebrated performer Leonard Cohen, from 1988 to 1993; today and tomorrow she pays tribute to him as part of Cabaret Series Studio 105, a lecture room by day that transforms into an intimate club by night.

Her Grammy-nominated Cohen tribute album, Bird on the Wire, features talents like Julie Christensen (another former Cohen back-up), David Hidalgo (of Los Lobos) and Bill Gable (a big player in pop, jazz and world music). Hit songs include the passionate duet “Dance Me Till the End of Love” and the folk ballad “Bird on the Wire.”

Batalla believes the album will evoke nostalgia in those lifelong Cohen fans and introduce his work to a younger generation of audiences who are less familiar – but might find something tempting in his raw and personal songwriting, a precedent that helped inform the indie folk scene of today.

She has the tools, writes Variety: “Batalla has a glorious, supple voice, with the vocal power to sing the bluesy, Bonnie Raitt-styled ‘Holy Roses’ and the finesse needed to bring new shadings to Leonard Cohen’s ‘Bird on a Wire.’”

Batalla’s own interpretation of the show experience is as intense as her voice: “When you perform, sometimes there’s a sense of loss and exhaustion in every way; physically, emotionally,” she says. “But there’s also a sense of excitement. I think all people crave to be understood, and there’s nothing like that feeling of being understood by an audience. You definitely went on a journey and you know you made it.”

Studio 105 Cabaret Presents PERLA BATALLA at 8pm Thursday and Friday, Oct. 24-25, at Sunset Center, San Carlos and Ninth, Carmel-by-the-Sea. $35, $49. 620-2048.

HEAR MORE HERE >> http://www.hotbloodorkestar.com