Norma Winstone: Stories Yet to Tell

British singer Norma Winstone got a Grammy nomination for her ethereal, understated album Distances, and this is an impressive follow-up. Like last time, Winstone has mixed standard songs with unexpected imports – mediaeval music or Armenian lullabies, plus originals and covers of themes by Maria Schneider and Wayne Shorter. Armando Manzanero's lost-love ballad Just Sometimes is magical, with Klaus Gesing's bass clarinet and Glauco Venier's piano gliding around Winstone as if comforting her. Dori Caymmi's Like a Lover is a sublime reflection, and Manfred Eicher's production superbly captures Winstone's upper-range purity and the sonorities of reeds and keys on Gesing's gliding Sisyphus. The Armenian Cradle Song hypnotically rocks to a mix of wordless vocals and Winstone's lyrics, and Venier's lively arrangement of the traditional Lipe Rosize is a ghostly theme that becomes increasingly folksy and bouyant. The 13th-century troubadour song En Mort d'En Joan de Cucanh sounds eerily as if it's happening in some faraway part of a church. Converts won't be disappointed.