Laura Ann Singh didn’t like what she found when she looked up her name on Google.
“I’ve done so many recordings and things,” she says with a sigh. “But if you look me up, it’s hard to understand what it is that I do.”
Singh’s official bio says that she is “associated with música popular brasileira and Latin boleros,” and most know her as the smoldering female voice in the trio, Miramar. But describing the performer’s total output is a bit like the blind man and the proverbial elephant. Where do you start?
“I’m kind of stretching out this year, if you can call it that,” says the singer-songwriter, who has a myriad of projects and collaborations currently simmering to a boil, each one a little (or a lot) different from the next.
One of those projects, with Miramar keyboardist Marlysse Simmons in tow, is Laura Ann Singh with Rosette, which drops a full-length album, “Crumb of Me,” on Wednesday, the same night the group performs at In Your Ear Studio for an intimate concert co-sponsored by JamInc.
It’s not to be missed. The ensemble’s sold out March performance at Reveler was a transcendent experience, with Laura Ann’s emotive and yearning vocals on top of an impeccably arranged set of specifically-curated songs. It’s a reminder that, whatever her other skills, Singh is a stellar interpreter.
“I have had this in my mind for probably three years,” she says of “Crumb of Me,” which was mostly recorded at White Star studios near Charlottesville with engineer Curtis Fye. “I’ve been collecting these arrangements from people that I just really admire as arrangers. And so this year I felt like I finally had enough.” One of the first singles from this project is the ensemble’s lively take on Joyce Moreno’s “Banana,” with a sparkling arrangement by Simmons.
Singh’s multilingual and chameleonic nature has found her performing with a wide range of players over the years, from the vocal jazz of John Winn to Doug Richards Big Band to the piano-based compositions of Curt Sydnor — she’s probably singing somewhere right now with some local jazz players. The Tennessee native, who lives in Richmond with husband Tim and daughter Zahra, recently recorded and toured with singer/composer Tomeka Reid on a suite of music dedicated to Duke Ellington on his 125th birthday.
She can seemingly do anything. But this consummate collaborator is getting restless. “I’m trying to invest a little bit in some of these other projects that have just been percolating for a long time.”
The long-percolating Rosette collaboration could seem at first like a gimmick. Boasting the four female string players in Rosette String Quartet — Ellen Riccio, Treesa Gold, Stephanie Barrett and Kimberly Ryan along with pianist Simmons and Ayça Kartari on bass — the repertoire consists only of songs by female songwriters, from Carole King to Judee Sill to Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier. But this is “a deeply personal project,” the singer says. “This is a statement. This is what I sound like, these are songs that mean something to me, made with people that I love. If someone were to ask me what my voice is, or what I sound like, this is it.”
Singh first hooked up with Rosette when the quartet backed her on Miramar’s 2022 single of Sylvia Rexach’s “Olas Y Arenas.”
“She talked to me a year ago, wanting to do a project like this,” says Ellen Riccio, who co-founded Rosette 10 years ago. “But she didn’t know what all the songs had in common, she wanted there to be some kind of theme. And I was like, I think the theme is that you love these songs and you can talk about them so well and so passionately. She’s so attuned to the lyrics as a singer.”
Riccio, who also serves as principal second violinist of the Richmond Symphony, says that Singh is in her prime as an artist right now. “She knows herself, and she knows what she can do.”
With the Laura Ann Singh Fracas Quintet, the singer showcases another side of what she can do.
Where the Rosette songs are delicate and precise, Fracas is loud, cacophonous, in-your-face — a raucous art jazz experience that often finds the songbird in deep freakout. “It’s a strange little project that I’m really proud of,” she says. “It’s not really anything I ever anticipated doing, but it just kind of happened really organically.”
The group features Bob Miller on trumpet, John Lilley on sax, bassist Adam Hopkins and Scott Clark on drums, and have a full-length album, “Mean Reds,” slated for release on Our of Your Head Records later this year. The songs are mostly Singh’s but it was her work with Scott Clark on his sextet album, “Dawn & Dusk,” that birthed the wild Fracas sound.
“She’s a great jazz vocalist,” says Clark. “She’s phenomenal at singing Spanish songs with Miramar, and this thing with Rosette now, but the Fracas is more the avant garde side of what she’s about. What’s so great about it is that it’s always her, it’s always her unique voice in every one of those projects, which I think is what makes it special. She’s never trying to be anything else, you know?”
All of this is happening at the same time that Singh is touring behind the second album, “Entre Tus Flores,” from Miramar, the trio she formed with Simmons and co-vocalist Rei Alvarez that has been winning international acclaim for revitalizing the romantic bolero. She and Simmons often perform as a duo as well, and have their own future plans to issue an album of original “Brazilian-ish” songs. “That’s on the back burner,” she says. “But it’s definitely simmering.”
The Tennessee native grew up near the Carter Family’s Carter Fold, listening to everything from Frank Sinatra to Patsy Cline to The Beatles. She was always musical, but her lifelong love for Latin American sounds began when she first heard João Gilberto and Stan Getz’ version of “Desafinado.” In her senior year at University of Richmond, where she majored in international studies, Singh began exploring bossa nova with Quatro Na Bossa, a collaboration with Kevin Harding. It’s how she originally connected with Simmons.
“When we formed Miramar, it was natural for her to sing in Spanish because she’d been singing Portuguese for so many years,” Simmons says. “But she’s always had things on the side.” At one time, Singh recorded commercial jingles and would be asked to sing in different styles, her friend recalls. “Singing country music was natural for her because of where she grew up, but it was hilarious to hear her sing hard rock or southern rock. But she could do it.”
For Singh, whatever the genre, whatever the style, she’s open. That may be why she’s been so incredibly prolific. And hard to google.
“I really love a lot of different kinds of music,” she says. “And I don’t want to be pigeonholed. This is who I am.”
Laura Ann Singh and the Rosette String Quartet perform at In Your Ear Studio A on Wednesday, May 28. Potuck is at 6:30 p.m., show 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 advance/$30 door. For more information and tickets, go to https://jaminc.org/string-ensemble-rosette-with-vocals-by-laura-ann-singh/
For more on the music of Laura Ann Singh, go to https://www.lauraannsingh.com/ or follow her on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/lasingh/
