Luciana Souza’s Songs of Longing

On her latest album, The Book of Longing, Los Angeles alumna Luciana Souza ’88 sings the poetry of Leonard Cohen, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, and herself in settings she composed. The album was produced by veteran music executive Larry Klein (Souza’s husband) with instrumentation that features bass (played by Scott Colley), acoustic and electric guitars (by Chico Pinheiro), and percussion overdubs by Souza.

Of the album, the Brazil-born vocalist says, “It became clear to me that I wanted this recording to be about words and how they make me feel. How a set of ideas can take me places, reveal things I didn’t know, or even know that I needed to know.” Souza wanted the words of the poems to be heard, but “not necessarily defined.”  “To me, the stringed instruments offer the best canvas for these songs,” she says. The Book of Longing is Souza’s 12th album as a leader and her 10th for the Sunnyside label. In November and December, Souza and her trio will complete tour dates across America, including an appearance at the Berklee Performance Center on November 9.