Bad Sassendorf, June 2023 - Jazz singer Simone Helle, who grew up in Germany with Persian roots, released her new album "My Starry Eyes" on June 16, 2023 via Timezone Records.
The album combines modern mainstream jazz with influences ranging from gospel to world music. Renowned musicians such as Olaf Krüger, Carsten Gronwald, Dimitrij Markitantov, Klaus Bernatzki, Thorsten Heitzmann, Cornelia Wolff, Nic Floer, Martin Scholz, Nils Imhorst, Caspar van Meel, Boris Becker, and Daniel Sanleandro feature on the album.
“My Starry Eyes,” produced by Simone Helle and Thomas Erkelenz, recorded in various recording studios, was mastered by Hans-Jörg Maucksch, Pauler Acoustics.
Helle's vocals are reminiscent of jazz greats like Nina Simone, Dianne Reeves, and Cassandra Wilson. Klaus Bernatzki's horn arrangements add depth and dynamics to Helle's compositions, enhancing her vocal radiance.
What's special about this album is the wide range of Helle's vocal expression—both stylistically and in terms of vocal range and timbre. With this album, Simone Helle has fulfilled her own dream of creating truly individual arrangements, creating a wide variety of atmospheres and moods with her highly complex and expansive vocal range, transporting the listener to a variety of sound worlds—an album to be enjoyed.
In a first album review of "MY STARRY EYES," Wolfgang Fricke for JAZZREPORTAGEN calls it "Truly beguiling and evocative!", noting "Helle's nuanced and soulfully used voice." The entire review of this "successful album" is contained in a portrait by Rainer Ortag of Simone Helle. here can be read on the Jazz Reportage Portal.
Helle's mission: to create an album that reflects her life experiences and gives musical space to the themes of respectful coexistence. With the track "Let us agree," in particular, she expresses the importance of a shared "code" of coexistence, such as human rights, in enabling diversity in peaceful coexistence.
The album was financed, among other things, by an artist scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia as part of the NRW Corona aid program and a successful crowdfunding campaign.
