Reviews

"Barbara Higbie is one of the most exciting musicians I have heard, full of life and brilliant in her playing."

.....Phil Elwood, S.F. Examiner/Chronicle

"Singer, instrumentalist Higbie generated energy and enthusiasm whenever she was on stage, like a jolt of bright sunlight."

.....Don Heckman, L.A. Times

"Barbara possesses rare talent and is amazingly versatile."

.....David Grisman

"Higbie is a classy talent."

.....Jennifer Einhorn, Boston Globe

"Barbara Higbie always seems to be discovering a new side of her talent."

.....Larry Kelp, Oakland Tribune

  From The Performing Musician, May/June 1997, by Neil Fagan:

Higbie is an accomplished pianist and singer/songwriter who also handles guitar, violin and the bouzouki quite nicely. She released an excellent album, Signs of Life, on Windham Hill before taking the indie route, and I Surrender shows her many moods and her many talents. Those moods run from the standard pop stylings of "Harmony" and the title track to the Latin beat of "Where You Are" and the jazz-soaked cover of John Coltrane's "Lonnie's Lament," which also shows off her French.

The instrumental "Onyame" was inspired by and dedicated to the people of Ghana, West Africa, and has the appropriate hint of a world beat. "Baby Bhudda" is a propulsive piano/violin instrumental with the kind of unexpected melody that gets stuck in your head all day. A blue, muted trumpet sets the mood of "Anouman." "Mudslide" is another instrumental that revolves dueling piano and violin.

Higbie's rich alto might not soar the way her piano and violin do, but it sounds right at home when celebrating the comforts of home in "Line Of Gold." I Surrender shows Barbara Higbie to be a major talent.
  From The San Francisco Bay Guardian, 3/12-18/97, by Derk Richardson:

If the multifaceted Barbara Higbie seemed out of place on the Windham Hill label, for which she recorded her solo debut and her commercially successful albums with the eclectic band Montreux, her long-awaited second solo CD further defies the categorization so essential to today's record and radio industries. A jazz pianist who can write and sing like Laura Nyro and Carol King, a prize-winning folk fiddler who will interpret a John Coltrane tune through a French vocal or add her own lyrics to one of Django Reinhardt's last compositions, Higbie brings all her gifts to bear on the self-produced I Surrender.

Pop radio could jump on such melodic love songs as "Harmony," "Line of Gold," "Where You Are,' and the title track--if their openhearted sincerity didn't run counter to fashionable irony and cynicism. Jazz stations would play the buoyant, Ghana-inspired "Onyame"; the haunting Brazilian piano and violin ballad, "Water Into Wine"; the romping "Baby Buddha"; or the rolling 'Mudslide"- if "jazz" hadn't become just another consultant-contrived programming straitjacket.

Sadly, no mainstream format exists for the smart, refreshing fusion Higbie invents by judiciously mixing her piano, violin, guitar, Celtic harp, synthesizer, and bouzouki with David Balakrishnan's violin, Nina Gerber's and Steve Erquiaga's guitars, Todd Phillips's and Benny Reitveld's basses, Steve Campos's trumpet, George Brooks's saxophone, Billy Lee Lewis's drums, and Chris Webster's and Shabda Owens's harmony vocals. Funny how music so emotionally straightforward and musically accessible can defy so many conventions.