Sherri Roberts serves up an absolutely delicious souffle of songs for her second Brownstone outing. The gastronomical imagery is, I believe, quite apt as her voice is as light as Helen Merrill's and/or Jeri Southern's, the arrangements, thanks to Soskin and Swartz, all risen with delicate precision, and the entire enterprise as flavorful as that mousse you so enjoy curling your taste buds around. It's no surprise to learn that Ms. Roberts spent some time as a student of Ms. Southern's, nor that she recognized Helen Merrill as a singing sister early on. Even though the voice is not weighty, it is beautifully expressive and rhythmically fluent. And the intelligence behind each lyric interpretation is manifest.

"Zoot" is an opening hoot, with Chris Potter playing tenor the way his early Criss Cross disc suggested he always could. "With A Song" is a tensely ardent reading of the Rodgers and Hart paean, with just the supporting trio in high filigree. "Social Call" calls for Potter's return, this time on soprano from which he draws some lovely clarinetish tones. "Two Kites" is a gentle bossa on which the trio is augmented by the strings and percussion. And so it goes, each track bristling with the result of considerable thought, planning and execution. Brubeck's "Meadowlark" (words by Meredith d'Ambrosio and Sharyn Abramoff) is given a very low key flight, with only Soskin's piano and Friedlander's intermittent cello accompanying. "It Never Entered", with both Potter's tenor pleadings and the strings in tow is given such an appropriately mournful reading that I am loathe to carp about the absence of the all but essential verse.

Perhaps heavier on the cabaret side of the spectrum, there's no mistaking Sherri Roberts' very insinuating Jazz voice on this recommended CD.