Andrea Capozzoli

Andrea Capozzoli performs this week at Club Cafe in Pittsburgh.

By Scott Beveridge

PORCHVIEW, Pa. – A tweet on the Net was enough this week to take me away from a project around the house on a recession-proof vacation close to home this week.

The independent 91.3fm WYEP used Twitter to promote another one of its Third Thursdays happy hours that provide live performances by the best local musicians, free food and beer.

The band, “Meeting of Important People,” was on the menu alongside chips, pretzels and beer from Pennsylvania Brewing Co.

I left after few songs at the station’s community headquarters in Pittsburgh’s trendy South Side district because the music, while it had a good beat, was too loud to tolerate.

An unexpected reward, though, came around the corner at Club Cafe, where a female rhythm and blues singer was on stage.

Pittsburgh native Andrea Capozzoli immediately drew me inside the lounge at 56 S. 12th St., and her talent, and especially those scat numbers, kept me there until the set was over.

The decision was set when she performed the number, “Can you stay for a while.”

An instructor at Berklee School of Music in Boston, she also held her own on the keyboard and when she pulled out a muted trumpet. Her guitarist, Casper Gyldensoe, was spot on with his performance, too.

Capozzoli’s love songs were perfect for this dim, intimate venue accented with blue and plum walls and twinkle lights strung on tree branches around the ceiling. There were just a dozen people in the audience, making it seem as if they were at a jam session in her family room. All she needed was sexy, silk ballroom gown to melt the room, where everyone was keeping time with the beat.

“You got to make time to make love,” she crooned.

It would be hard not to fall in love with her voice.

It’s too bad that I didn’t purchase one of her albums before leaving to later liven up the mood at home during that miserable job of painting the entrance hall. Click here to listen to a sample of her music.

Meanwhile, Club Cafe wasn’t the place to seek out a good meal. The menu is limited to such small dishes as chili and pizza. The bruschetta pizza with green and black olives I selected arrived undercooked, and it didn't appear in any way to resemble bruschetta.

And while Pittsburgh is so lucky to have WYEP, the station needs to find another room to hold its concerts, or at least break a second door from the lobby into the studio to ease the congestion. The room is just too cramped.
POSTED BY SCOTT BEVERIDGE AT FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2009
LABELS: FOOD, MUSIC, PITTSBURGH, REVIEW

- Scott Beveridge Blogspot

Review: Andrea Capozzoli
Buzz up!By Bob Karlovits, TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Photos

Andrea Capozzoli


About the writer
Bob Karlovits can be reached via e-mail or at 412-320-7852.

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Whitehall native Andrea Capozzoli showed the mastery teachers are supposed to have at her Jazz Appreciation Month gig at the Cabaret Theater, Downtown.

It makes sense. She teaches at the jazz-oriented Berklee School of Music in Boston. But there was nothing too academic about her show. She displayed a crisp, clear voice and a noteworthy ability to scat.

Pittsburgh sax star Kenny Blake sat in April 14 with the band she brought from Boston, but the most impressive sideman was guitarist Casper Gyldensoe. He and Capozzoli put together a sizzling blend of Charlie Parker's "Ornithology" and "How High the Moon."

Capozzoli showed adequate skills on trumpet on "You Don't Know What Love Is," but was more impressive as a songwriter. Her "We Used to Be" was a Carole King-flavored bit of pop-jazz, and "So Real" stood out even more in its mainstream styling.

She also did "Love for Sale" in an odd 7/4 time signature, giving the Cole Porter standard new life.


- Tribune Review

Capozzoli, a Whitehall native, will show how that thinking plays a large role in her singing when she performs Tuesday at the second installment of the Jazz Appreciation Month events Downtown.

She blends rhythm-and-blues styles with jazz-scatting and improvisation. But that doesn't mean the shape of her work stops there. She is putting together a debut album, and says many of the songs "have a kind of poppy feel" that move it from that usual jazz flavor.

She hopes to have albums available at the concert.

With Capozzoli, 30, listeners probably aren't going to find too much music bound by tradition.


Capozzoli brings to jazz several layers of talent and is trying to add to it a multi-styled freshness that will move it further into the 21st century. She started playing trumpet when she was 4, and had a seat in the Baldwin High School jazz band her freshman year.

That developed an appreciation for jazz, as well as some instrumental skills she hasn't given up. Besides teaching voice at Berklee, which she has done since she graduated there, she also plays in a Boston-based jazz band, the Hip Pocket Orchestra.

But voice is her biggest talent, and has been since she was 13, when she started formal training. But being a jazz trumpet player at the same time, she got interested jazz singing. She says it was when she heard the group Five Guys Named Moe that she saw a great deal of potential in that kind of work.

She ended up studying with Maureen Budway, the Duquesne University vocal teacher who maintains a strong performance career here and elsewhere.

While Capozzoli has become a singer well versed in the tradition and legacy of jazz vocals, she also has developed a desire to do some newer material -- in a jazz-linked way.

For instance, if you take a song by Sting and do it in a jazz way, she says, it becomes a jazz song as much as the show tune "If I Were a Bell" became a jazz song when Miles Davis did it.

"I don't mind doing standards, but I want to do them my own way," she says.


- Tribune Review

Quit lying Philly soul fans. You weren’t at The Black Lily when Jill Scott performed there, you never saw Jazmine Sullivan at any high school talent show, and you’ve never run into Musiq Soulchild beatboxing on South Street. Well, now’s your chance to make up for it, and her name is ANDREA CAPOZZOLI. She’s performed for Steely Dan, Sister Sledge, Jessica Simpson, and President Barack Obama – but really, who hasn’t? Chris’ Jazz Café is hosting her CD release party this Thursday, and it’ll only cost you a ten spot. What that gets you is a singer who can – wait for it – actually sing! We’re talking really pretty soul music people, the kind you really like. If you don’t believe me, follow the link to her myspace http://www.myspace.com/andreacapozzoli, or hit up Chris’ Jazz Café at 215-568-3131. Then in about a year when everybody’s talking about her, you can say how you saw her back in the day – and this time it’ll be the truth.
by GARY LIME - Paparazzi Magazine