When Someone Thinks You Are Wonderful (2010)

• Nicole Ratté: vocals
• JP Allain: piano, and most of the arranging
• Denis Ouellet: drums
• Mike Tremblay: saxophone
• Don Paterson: trumpet
• René Gely: guitar
• Rob Graves: percussion

See Nicole Ratté‘s web site here, and perhaps book a gig or get the album!

This is a début album for Nicole’s second career, and what a splash! A nice combination of powerful arrangements of some jazz standards, and some not so standards. This is one of the first albums to be recorded with my new old 1920’s Steinway grand piano, recently restored. All of the bed tracks were recorded over 3 days, mostly live. During these sessions, each musician had a room of their own with full isolation, and even Nicole could sing her vocals fully isolated from the others. This allowed us to track additional solo takes during dedicated sessions.

“I always tease Norm telling him that he has “supersonic ears” and I trust him a lot. The recording and mixing went wonderfully as he was well organized and efficient making things go smoothly.  He had great suggestions and really understood who I am and the overall impression I wanted for my album. What made it a great experience was that he was really taking my project at heart and his encouragements and great sense of humor created the ideal atmosphere. Norm certainly knows what he’s doing!” – Nicole Ratté