Montreal-based Ranee Lee has all the technical skills that you could want in a jazz singer--range, pitch, swing, flexibility--and they"re combined with a sense of a lyric"s nuances and an ability to project sorrows and joys with vitality. This CD consists of selections from Dark Divas, Lee"s one-woman musical in which she re-creates the characters and songs of some of the great voices of the African American vocal tradition, bringing her abundant talent to bear on material associated with singers from Josephine Baker to Sarah Vaughan. Lee alters her timbre to recreate the flavor of those voices, but she never descends into mere imitation or parody, instead invoking a sense of each singer within her own voice, be it Pearl Bailey"s brash humor or Billie Holiday"s emotional depth. She"s at her best with those singers who have most strongly influenced her own style, invoking Dinah Washington"s spirit for "Makin" Whoopee" and Vaughan"s ethereal musicality on "If You Could See Me Now." The settings are consistently well done, with Rick Wilkins"s arrangements effectively framing Lee"s performances and evoking different eras, while guitarist Richard Ring and trombonist Muhammed Abdul Al-Khabyyr stand out among the band members. It"s a project few contemporary singers could undertake, and fewer still might succeed in, but Lee fares very well. --Stuart Broomer