Maria Corsaro, Love Makes the Changes Review

by Constance Tucker

Maria Corsaro’s new album, Love Makes the Changes, is an example of what happens when a vocalist fully embraces jazz as an expressive language. Her voice moves with the clarity, warmth, and narrative poise of a seasoned storyteller, while the spirit of jazz shapes her phrasing from the inside out. Guided by pianist, arranger, and musical director Gregory Toroian, Corsaro brings to life a cross-genre repertoire that ranges from Del Sasser to Michel Legrand, Bill Evans, Antonio Carlos Jobim, and Oliver Nelson, with producer David Friedman shaping the session and an ensemble tuned to the nuance of Skip Ward on bass, David Silliman on drums, and Mark Fineberg on saxophone and flute.

Toroian sets the arrangements that open spaces for Corsaro’s vocal imagination. His arrangements allow the ensemble to shimmer with jazz creativity and reflect his long partnership with the singer. Ward and Silliman provide the heartbeat with sensitive, responsive, and flowing between swing, bossa, rubato, and jazz blues. Fineberg’s woodwinds add coloristic dimension, expanding the emotional canvas Corsaro paints upon.

The album opens with “If You Never Fall in Love With Me,” a track that defines Corsaro’s artistic identity. What strikes the ear first is her rhythmic playfulness as she leans into the swing feel with a buoyant, expressive touch that makes the melody come alive. Her tone is rich and round, carrying a classic swing overtone that feels timeless and natural. As she moves up in range, she builds the melodic shape with intention, crafting each phrase with a jazz singer’s instinct for color and contour. The ensemble swings with effortless charm as the sax, drums, and piano solos bring crisp energy. Toroian’s arrangement cleverly shifts into a Latin section, touches on a rubato interlude, and returns to swing for a satisfying cadence, giving Corsaro a dynamic arc to inhabit vocally.

“No More Blues” offers a different dimension of her technique. After Fineberg’s opening saxophone statement, Corsaro enters with a warm, ballad-like tone that frames the melody with tenderness before the arrangement transitions into a medium-up bossa. Here she grooves within the clave naturally, shaping each phrase with stylistic ease and emotional command. Her embellishments feel unforced with elegant ripples that honor the tune’s lineage while adding her personal stamp. She understands how to float above a bossa texture without losing rhythmic specificity, and the result is graceful and deeply musical.

That sense of interpretive honesty extends to the title track, “Love Makes the Changes,” a slow jazz-blues where Corsaro’s phrasing blossoms into full expressive clarity. She adopts a powerful emotional stance that is rooted in jazz, blues, and refined by melodic sensibility. Her rhythmic feel is elegant, her melodic shaping confident and unhurried. This is where her vocal subtly infuses the performance with emotion, making each phrase come alive with meaning without ever tipping into theatrical excess.

“Stolen Moments” further showcases her interpretive intelligence. The arrangement is harmonically rich and rhythmically inviting, and Corsaro responds with a relaxed, instrumentally inflected approach. Her diction remains clear and precise, but her lines unfurl like a horn player’s, her phrases stretching, bending, and settling into the contours of the harmony. She brings out the elegance of the minor-blues melody with unforced poise, and her interplay with the band underscores her trust in the ensemble: she leaves space, reacts, answers, and integrates her voice seamlessly into the group sound.

Throughout the album, Corsaro reveals a commitment to storytelling that goes beyond lyric interpretation. “In April (For Nenette)” carries reflective delicacy; “Secret Love / Never Said (Chan’s Song)” balances dramatic through-line with jazz fluidity; “You Taught My Heart to Sing” becomes a study in tenderness and breath-crafted phrasing. On “Portrait in Black and White,” she enters a more art-song realm, letting the harmonic tension guide her dynamic shifts and tonal shading. “Walkin’ Shoes” brings back unfiltered swing delight, and “I Have the Feeling I’ve Been Here Before” offers emotional introspection. The album closes with “That Day,” drawn from Cinema Paradiso, where her cinematic instincts and vocal warmth merge into a beautifully shaped final statement.

What makes Love Makes the Changes such a compelling vocal album is the celebration of the history of jazz at its core. Corsaro honors the jazz sound with her rhythmic feel and phrasing choices. She carries her ideas with clarity, dramatic focus, and emotional transparency of the tradition. Toroian’s arrangements support and spark her expressive choices at every turn, and the band functions as a collaborative extension of her voice. Together, they deliver a project that bridges genres with honesty and grace. Maria Corsaro’s Love Makes the Changes does exactly what the title promises: it shows how love of music, of storytelling, and of collaboration can reshape and renew the songs we know.