Here’s an artist who stands out from the crowd. She’s all about jazz vocals, and she extends that free-flowing easy vibe through all of her material.

With imprints of both urban rhythms and blues influences, Joye B. Moore’s extra tight vibrato and jazz Gospel sounds are laid upon a solid base of Gospel lyrics, and ones which are sometimes laced with personal experiences, offered up as encouragement.

On “Canvas of Life”, Moores sets a soft candle groove filled with gently percussive conga and bass. Lyrically describing the omniscence of God our individual lives, Moore uses the artist metaphor to describe how we are God’s masterpieces:

Other cut standouts are the wedding song, “Before Him”, and “Choose Ye This Day”, where Moore demonstrates her gift for scat. There's also “Sending You a Blessing” which begins with a mom-baby chat intro-lude before venturing into an urban inflected, chorus-backed praise flow with occasional soaring lead vocals from Moore.

With a thoroughly jazz credentialed band giving support, rhythmic snares and acoustic piano (from Fabian Dickerson) are in order throughout the CD. All songs are co-written by Moore, generating a vibe that often focuses more on jazz ripples and harmonies than on melodic line. It’s a blend that lends much to the signature sound of the Virginia-based artist.

An intriguing sidebar to the project is the tremendous hoops and hurdles that Moore Music Ministires is going through in order to be able to eventually include two of the songs originally scheduled for the project. While there are 10 tracks listed on the inside liner, only 8 made it onto the disc —due to red tape. Both dropped cuts have samples incorporated into them, making publishing rights difficult to come by. One of them is the freely jazzed title cut, “Project Butterfly” which contains elements of “Ooh Child”. The other is “He’s All I Need”, an absolutely bomb hip-hop flava’d jam with phat rap stylings from Obadiah. It's a modified arrangement originally from Ashford and Simpson.

Even with the absence of the title cut on the disc, the album title (Project Butterfly) is wholly appropriate to Moore’s offerings. With fluttering vocals, patterned nuances and pretty phrasing, the imagery is a true fit to this new artist, who deserves discovery.

Producers: Jim Bonnefond, Fabian Dickerson album release date: late 1999
Moore Music Ministries

— reviewed by Stan North —

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