Sometimes you need some music that is easy on the ear yet has more substance than background music. If that is your wont then Melinda Ligeti’s second solo album “Belonging” might be just what you are looking for.
Her jazz background shines brightly throughout these songs drawn from the heart and allows her to evoke a mood that is both melancholy and spiritual. It is her focus on melody, however, that carries these songs forward with even the wordless “True Story” staying true on its course to the land of enchantment. There are, as always, influences but they are, in truth, more signs on the road than destinations with, for example, “Long Way Home” being as much Schubert as it is Dave Grusin.
Ever cool but never diffident, Melinda Ligeti then sashays her way through “Barefoot On the Beach” as if bossa nova had just been invented yet, as with “Sunset”, she can take the normal ambivalent presentational style of ambient jazz and make it instead into something warm and ethereal.
An album that might, unfortunately, pass many by, “Belonging” is as good a cure for musical stridency as you are likely to find.