Cedar Walton: "Roseanna Vitro, one of my favorite vocalists, sings with a great feeling for jazz. Her readings on major compositions are monumental."
Joe Lovano: "The truth is in your sound and feelings and from the first time I heard and played music with Roseanna Vitro, I was captured by her powerful expression. She's always been one of my favorite musicians on the scene. Truth Be Told!"
George Coleman: "Roseanna Vitro is a wonderful singer. She's multifaceted - singing the blues, ballads, etc., and is very versatile!"
Fred Hersch: "Roseanna vitro is a singer of extraordinary depth and passion."
David "Fathead" Newman: "It's about time that people know Roseanna Vitro, a voice of true tone, one of the great Kahunas!"
Kenny Werner: "Roseanna Vitro has always swung her butt off and poured her entire being into each and every song. In a perfect world, she'd be singing all over the world and spreading her passionate energy to the scintillation of millions of people. but hey folks, it's not too late!"
Ed Joffe , Director Jazz Studies, New Jersey City University: "It is my pleasure to talk about Roseanna. Here goes: Roseanna's singing embodies the history of great female jazz vocalists. Charles Mingus once said that if he can't hear the history of the bass in someone's playing then he wasn't interested in hearing them at all! That's why I've always loved her singing. Also, she keeps improving because she's constantly searching for more knowledge. As a music educator, Roseanna provides her students with every opportunity to experience the reality of singing for a career. What other person would reguarly book evenings at a jazz nightclub just to enable her students to work with a professional rhythm section in front of a live audience and in New York City no less? She is totally giving in the discipline of teaching."
Paris Rutherford, Director of UNT Jazz Singers: "Her perfomance was supurb and the students still talk of her honest and down-to-earth sharing with them in comments. It is a rarity to have a fine singer on campus who will take the soul time to communicate to talented students who are hungry for the experienced view on the music business and life in general.
Michael Bourne - Host of "Singers Unlimited," WBGO Radio Newark / New York: I remember meeting Roseanna Vitro in the summer of 1985 at a BMI party at the fabled Copacabana. I remember actually staggering back a little from the very force of her personality. Like walking out of a movie matinee into sudden sunlight. Damn near blinding. I hadn't heard her singing then, but often through the years since then, I've been delighted by her singing. That blaze of her personality is undimmed. And her eyes nonetheless sparkle with mischief. I've felt for a long time that Roseanna Vitro is a definitive New York jazz singer. She perseveres even when the gigs singers can get in the better New York jazz joints are few and far between. And she sings her butt off just as much when the gigs are in noisy holes in the wall where the counterpoint is a big-screen ballgame.
Two things about Roseanna Vitro stand out for me. One is that she's so generous with her time and with her spirit. How she's always there to encourage other singers. How she's become like a den mother to many talented women of jazz and song in New York. And then there's her voice. Sweet and yet always with an undercurrent of Texas bluesfulness, she sings ballads from deep down. Yet even when she's bluesy, she can be breezy. That aforementioned mischief in her eyes bubbles through as a laugh that's always lurking in her voice. And often comes out. And she can swing with the best of them.
What's best about this new album is the very sound of her voice. Like an opera diva who shouldn't sing certain parts until her voice darkens and deepens, Roseanna's voice is right now just right to vocalize Bill Evans. The pastels of his melodies. The richness of his harmonies. And her phrasing sounds to me very much like Bill's at the piano. So gracefully swinging.
I've always appreciated how resolutely Roseanna works on her craft. Practical realities like learning how to sing in tune escape some singers nowadays, but Roseanna knows that it's not enough to be in tune, that a singer must also be in touch with what happens around her voice. Like every good jazz singer, Roseanna lets her band play. The better to be one with them. The better to be one of them. Listen on this album to how her voice interacts with three very different pianists, especially the very lyrical Fred Hersch. And how her voice engages the bass of Eddie Gomez in virtually vocal duets.
She's also more and more in touch with the emotions of a song, a quality that also comes over time. Heart. Soul. Roseanna's got plenty of both. Listen on this album to "Waltz for Debbie" and you'll know without being told that she's a mother as you feel all the tenderness and tears of a mother's love. Roseanna lives this song with her daughter Sarah and I feel she sings this song better than even Tony Bennett with Bill Evans.
Conviction is an apt title for a jazz artist's album. Because talent is not enough. Because craft is not enough. Because working hard is not enough if one does not wholeheartedly believe in the rightness of what one is up to. Conviction could be the tltle of any album of Roseanna Vitro.