Since the release on September 22, 2009, the response has been astounding: >>The Village Voice Jazz Critics Poll 2009**4th in the Best Vocalist Category** >>Jason Crane’Top 10 of 2009 – The FreeSong Suite was Jason’s TOP Pick for the Year >>NPR Jazz: Ten Great Moments from Jazz Recordings in 2009 >>AllAboutJazz-NewYork’s Best of 2009 – Best Vocal Releases >>PopMatters.com: The Best Jazz of 2009 >>Laurence Donohue-Greene’s Top 10+ of 2009 >>Elzy Kolb: A Few Of My Favorite Things in 2009 >>CKUT Jazz Director’s Top 20 list >>Délire Actuel 2009 Demanding Music Top 30 Some Reviews: “A jazz singer who makes her notes slow, wide and meaningful—she often sounds like an evening-out of Betty Carter and Abbey Lincoln—Fay Victor uses a great and simple concept on The FreeSong Suite (Greene Avenue Music)…a studio recording organized like a live set. This means the band flows from one song into another, without knowing where it’s going next…these songs have distinct melodic character: fascinating ballads with Anders Nilsson’s country-bluesy guitar soloing, drum chants, some careful free improvising.” -Ben Ratliff, The New York Times “Victor’s soulful, emotive delivery combines with avant-tinged invention, placing her alongside great vocal innovators like Betty Carter, Jeanne Lee, Sheila Jordan…a truly creative singer with the chops to accomplish whatever she wants, but the good taste to ensure that substance always trumps style…The Freesong Suite is a vocal album that stands well above the pack; a welcome respite from the unwieldy preponderance of unimaginative vocal jazz albums hitting the market.” -John Kelman, allaboutjazz.com “The Fay Victor Ensemble’s The FreeSong Suite (Greene Avenue, 2009) is a tour de force of writing, improvisation and performance. Victor and her band paint one fluid word picture after another, linking these composed sections with free playing that is smart, muscular and emotional. From free improv to the blues to alt-rock and back again, The FreeSong Suite is easily one of my top 10 records of 2009.” -Jason Crane, The Jazz Session “The FreeSong Suite, peers into the NYC-based vocalist’s challenging and rewarding world of captivating vocal work and stirring spontaneity.” -Andrew Zender, PopMatters.com “Victor scats, vocalizes, chips, mumbles and sings bluesy chromatics or angular displays of dexterity, delivering the unexpected with beauty, depth and innovation.” -Wilbur MacKenzie, All About Jazz-New York “One of the most interesting voices to have emerged in recent years…always manages magically to be herself and to propose a music that looks forward cleverly mixing elements from past and present.” -Mauritzio Comandini, All About Jazz: Italia “Victor has the chops, the phrasing, the band and the courage to make contemporary music that references contemporary culture and materials that range from Carter to Berberian to Sun Ra to Hendrix. This is sheer, unadulterated brilliance. Buy it!” - Nilan Perera, Exclaim.ca, Canada’s Music Authority The FreeSongSuite is New York-based vocalist/composer Fay Victor’s second recording of all-original music with her longstanding working quartet, The Fay Victor Ensemble.“This is one of the most astonishing jazz vocal albums I have ever heard,” writes legendary New York guitarist Gary Lucas in the liner notes. “I recommend this album to the legions of bored listeners out there: it is hypnotic in its flow, every song in the three sections of the suite a masterpiece of compressed storytelling...they just don’t make albums as good as this anymore.”