Susan Hinkson | "Just In Time"

Jazz Vocalist Susan Hinkson’s

Enchanting Debut Album Arrives

May 9, 2025 via windfall creations, LLC

Featuring Bruce Barth, Steve Wilson,

Vicente Archer and Adam Cruz

Co-Produced by Bruce Barth

The Debut Single “Just In Time” Is Out Now on All Streaming Platforms

The Second Single “One For My Baby” Out March 7

The Great American Songbook offers a depth of interpretation, a wellspring of expression, a milestone of cultural magnitude. It has become a standard for most jazz vocalists to dive into the lyrical songbook waters, yet many sink for their efforts. Not so with jazz newcomer Susan Hinkson whose debut album Just In Time (on windfall creations, LLC) buoyantly arrives with a spirited setlist of standards that she delivers with enchanting beauty.

She breathes new life into the tried-and-true tunes, opening with the Harold Arlen/Johnny Mercer melancholic love song “One For My Baby” and closing with the playful tune “Rhode Island Is Famous For You,” put on the map by one of her heroes, Blossom Dearie.

Produced by her mentor Bruce Barth, Just In Time features Barth on piano in the superb New York quintet comprising alto saxophonist Steve Wilson, bassist Vicente Archer and drummer Adam Cruz. “My end goal of this project was pursuing music that I really enjoy,” says Hinkson. “These songs always spoke to me as a little kid. They’re a part of my soul. I want people to enjoy these songs and hopefully find some moments that resonate. I put myself and my emotions into this.”

With impeccable intimacy, grace and joy, Hinkson took personal ownership these time-honored standards. “It totally grew out of serendipity,” she says. “It became the project. I had to follow the universe that was leading it to me. It’s, close your eyes and go with it.”

At the moment, Hinkson is invisible on the New York jazz scene after following a successful career as a regulator and policy maker for architectural real estate both for the city of New York and as the managing member in the Capalino Ventures, LLC urban strategy firm. But at a certain point, Hinkson made a change. “Most of my time was spent making regulatory decisions about land use in the city,” she says. “But I started thinking about what to do when I decided I didn’t want to do real estate anymore.”

Hinkson had worked closely with Richard Barth, the touchstone of regulatory real estate land use, who introduced her to his brother Bruce. “We talked about music,” she says. “And I asked him if I could take singing lessons from him regarding my style and developing my voice. I was totally fascinated with the Broadway tunes of my youth and sang at school and with a bunch of friends. My mother was a musical arranger on Broadway. Back in the day, I used to listen to the Make Believe Ballroom radio show on WNEW that played all the popular songs of earlier years. So meeting with Bruce centered me back to myself.”

Instead of following a traditional style of voice lessons with Barth, the two played together standards they each brought to the sessions. “It was playing songs we really liked and learning how I could covey my expressions that communicate myself into what I sing,” Hinkson says. “Then one day Bruce said, let’s record. He put a band together. They gave me such great support. It became a collaboration. I realized I was in retirement mode, so here it is: my next chapter. Why not? I enjoy the process. I see Just in Time as an arc of feeling about love, loss of love, finding it again, suffering deep wounds that heal. That became my theme. I’ve heard all these songs hundreds of times in my life, but I don’t fear doing them again. I don’t want to be compared. This is simply our version of this wealth of music.”

The title track about fleeting love by Jules Styne/Adolph Green/Betty Comden was made famous by Nina Simone in 1962. It’s a swinging tune here, with a steady bass line and a round of solo breaks by all bandmembers. “I love Nina’s voice,” says Hinkson. “She’s one of my favorites. She’s one of the vocalists that has informed my singing. This tune is about finding somebody just in time.”

The balladic take with whispered voice on Richard Rodgers/Lorenz Hart’s Broadway hit “My Funny Valentine” takes Hinkson back to her junior high rendition of it in a school performance of Babes in Arms. “It’s followed me wherever I’ve gone,” she says. “It’s about love and not just being romantic. It’s about a love of something that doesn’t work out. You hope for it to work out, but you’re left with frustration. This is life.”

Hinkson and co. jump into an upbeat, swing take on the 1928 Jimmy McHugh/Dorothy Fields richly melodic tune “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love.” “It’s fun,” she says. “It resets the tone of the collection. It’s like a palate cleanser—the sorbet in the middle.” That’s followed by the Rodgers/Oscar Hammerstein lyrical “It Might As Well Be Spring,” accentuated by Cruz’s deft drum play. Then there’s a doubleheader of Rodgers/Hart tunes featuring the delightfully swinging “I Wish I Was in Love Again” (a breaking up drama to a longing for return) and the sad “But Not for Me.”

The most romantic moment of the album comes with the grand anticipation-of-love song “Besame Mucho “ which translated means “kiss me a lot.” It’s a classic bolero written by Consuelo Velasquez when he was 16 years old in 1932. “This was a hard song for me to sing,” Hinkson says. “I had to call on my high school Spanish. Everyone has done this, but I sang it to be a little satirical.”

There’s a back story about including the bright/hopeful “The Best Is Yet to Come”—the Cy Coleman/Carolyn Leigh 1959 classic. “Bruce and I started talking about boy songs and girl songs,” says Hinkson. “So we took this song that has a male perspective, yet it could be sung perfectly by a female voice. You can hear Sinatra sing it, but this turns out to be a very different version than the one for the total rat pack genre.”

The Rodgers/Hammerstein/Gregg Edelman tune “This Nearly Was Mine” from the 1949 Broadway hit, South Pacific, swings back to the album theme—grieving for the love-filled life that has gone.

Throughout Just in Time, Hinkson reveals herself as a terrific storyteller. “I’ve always thought that the best way to communicate an idea is to tell it in a song,” she says. In the collection, she reaches back to the past, but tastefully sings these stories into the future.

—Dan Ouellette

DownBeat, Jazz & Beyond Intel, author of The Landfill Chronicles: Unearthing Legends of Modern Music.

Susan Hinkson · Just In Time

Windfall Creations · Release Date: May 9, 2025

For more information on Susan Hinkson, please visit:

susanhinksonmusic.com | Instagram

For media inquiries, please contact:

DL Media · ‭(917) 929-4910

Roberta Lawrence · roberta@dlmediamusic.com

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