''Lento'' is the eighth studio album by

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

singer-songwriter

Na Yoon-Sun Na Yoon-sun ( ko, 나윤선; born August 28, 1969), also known as Youn Sun Nah, is a South Korean jazz musician. Life and career Na Yoon-sun was born on August 28, 1969, in Seoul. Her parents are musical: her father, Na Young-soo (나영수) ...

, released on March 12, 2013 by

ACT Music ACT is a German record label founded in 1992 by Siegfried Loch. It is a division of ACT + Music Video founded by Loch and Annette Humpe in 1988. ACT started as a pop music label but folded soon after it started. Loch turned it into a jazz label, ...

. It is the third album that Yoon-Sun and ACT Music worked on music together. After Yoon-Sun refused to contract with French record label Bleu, she had formed

quintet A quintet is a group containing five members. It is commonly associated with musical groups, such as a string quintet, or a group of five singers, but can be applied to any situation where five similar or related objects are considered a single ...

with

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

accordionist Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed i ...

Vincent Peirani Vincent Peirani (born 24 April 1980) is a French jazz accordionist, vocalist and composer who has played internationally, collaborating with Denis Colin, François Jeanneau, Youn Sun Nah, Émile Parisien, Michel Portal, Louis Sclavis, and Micha ...

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

guitarist A guitarist (or a guitar player) is a person who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of guitar family instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselv ...

Ulf Wakenius Ulf, or Ulv is a masculine name common in Scandinavia and Germany. It derives from the Old Norse word for "wolf" (''úlfr'', see Wulf). The oldest written record of the name's occurrence in Sweden is from a runestone of the 11th century. The fe ...

, French

percussionist A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Ex ...

Xavier Desandre-Navarre, and Swedish

bassist A bassist (also known as a bass player or bass guitarist) is a musician who plays a Bass (instrument), bass instrument such as a double bass (upright bass, contrabass, wood bass), bass guitar (electric bass, acoustic bass), synthbass, keyboar ...

and

cellist The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a bowed (sometimes plucked and occasionally hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually tuned in perfect fifths: from low to high, C2, G2, D3 ...

Lars Danielsson Lars Danielsson (born 5 September 1958) is a Swedish jazz bassist, composer, and record producer. Biography Danielsson was born in Smålandsstenar, and was educated at the Conservatory of music, music conservatory in Gothenburg. He plays doub ...

. This quintet has been working together since 2009 when they created Yoon-Sun's sixth album ''Voyage''. This album's title comes from the Italian word 'lento,' Which means 'performing music slowly.' Yoon-Sun wrote and produced all the songs in "Lento." Indeed, most of the songs which this album contains are slowly paced. In addition, even though she was not originally a

jazz musician This is a list of jazz musicians by instrument based on existing articles on Wikipedia. Do not enter names that lack articles. Do not enter names that lack sources. Accordion * Kamil Běhounek (1916–1983) * Luciano Biondini (born 1971) * A ...

and had sung various types of music such and

rock Rock most often refers to: * Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids * Rock music, a genre of popular music Rock or Rocks may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...

and

classical music Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical music, as the term "classical music" also ...

, she uses variety of

techniques or produces similar effects in her songs in ''Lento''. In this album, she performs

scat singing In vocal jazz, scat singing is vocal improvisation with wordless vocables, nonsense syllables or without words at all. In scat singing, the singer improvises melodies and rhythms using the voice as an instrument rather than a speaking medium. ...

, creates swing feeling, and the quintet plays in A-A-B-A form in some songs while fusing those techniques with other genres. One remarkable point other than her vocal jazz performance is her re

arrangement In music, an arrangement is a musical adaptation of an existing composition. Differences from the original composition may include reharmonization, melodic paraphrasing, orchestration, or formal development. Arranging differs from orches ...

of Korean traditional

folk song Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be c ...

Arirang "Arirang" (; ) is a Korean folk song. There are about 3,600 variations of 60 different versions of the song, all of which include a refrain similar to "''Arirang, arirang, arariyo'' ()". It is estimated the song is more than 600 years old. ...

. Na Yoon-Sun sang this jazz version of Arirang at

Sochi Sochi ( rus, Со́чи, p=ˈsotɕɪ, a=Ru-Сочи.ogg) is the largest resort city in Russia. The city is situated on the Sochi River, along the Black Sea in Southern Russia, with a population of 466,078 residents, up to 600,000 residents in ...

Winter

Olympic Olympic or Olympics may refer to Sports Competitions * Olympic Games, international multi-sport event held since 1896 ** Summer Olympic Games ** Winter Olympic Games * Ancient Olympic Games, ancient multi-sport event held in Olympia, Greece b ...

closing ceremony in 2014 celebrating South Korea's hosting of the next winter Olympic.

Commercial performance

''Lento'', after it was released, was commercially successful in several countries in Europe. It has been peaked on #14 in French Leschart and # 70 in Switzerland. In Germany, Yoon-Sun received German Jazz Gold Award for reaching to #1 in German Chart. She also received

ECHO In audio signal processing and acoustics, an echo is a reflection of sound that arrives at the listener with a delay after the direct sound. The delay is directly proportional to the distance of the reflecting surface from the source and the list ...

, the German Grammy as the best international jazz singer and most sold-out album.

Track listing

Personnel

- Vocal, Producer, Singer-Songwriter * Vincent Peirani - Accordion * Lars Danielsson - Bass, Cello * Xavier Desandre-Navarre - Percussion * Ulf Wakenius - Guitar * Seung Hwan Roh - Design lbum Design* Lars Nilsson - Engineer * Michael Dahlvid - Engineer ssistant* JJ In - Executive-Producer * Sung Yull Nah - Photography * Axel Matignon - Producer

References

{{Authority control 2013 albums Na Yoon-sun albums