Rewarded by the Dutch National Blues Awards in 2010, Mariella Tirotto is a Dutch artist who, together with her Blues Federation, knows how to capture the essence of the Blues with her first album and turned it into a rich piece of art with high density. The CD was released to the delight of an audience of connoisseurs, unanimously cheering the voice of the singer but also the fine and flawless play of her “sidemen de Luxe” like the guitarist Harald Koll, the harmonica player Michel de Kok, the bass player and pianist Heins Greten and the drummer John Kakiay. Joined on the occasion by a brass band with saxophones, trombones and trumpets, Mariëlla Tirotto & The Blues Federation have created their own authentic repertoire and are now committed to present it to Europe in its entirety, confident that their music is able to cross borders and to convince the North to South and West to East. Working with the same talent and inspiration for blues as well as jazz, Mariella  Tirotto knows how to modulate her voice so warm and rich on titles in which the accents from Chicago-sounds  are joined by but also very often caught up by her jazzy New York kind of soul. Full of bubbly feeling or delightfully charming, "Somewhere Down The Road" takes us along a vast range of styles and sounds and passes in an unquestionable brilliance of stylised songs  like "Confused Woman's Blues," "High Fever" or "Window Of My Eyes”, or others more lively like "Wintertime Blues", "Tourist Fun" or "Come To Me". The musicians  offer the 12-bar-genre the care to be presented under broadest of their possibilities and allowing the listener and more especially the spectator to feast on all the colors of Blues, unencumbered and without limits when it comes to being captivating. Varied, elusive and  full of charm  due to the image of the female singer, the album is certainly not presented in the form of any revolution able to modify the face of the Blues but it shows at every moment of a genuine passion and especially much of talent, so many arguments that make you want to discover this band live on stage, a band that also knows how to let the request of tribal accents in his music such as in “Bad Soul” ... One of the best bets of European blues!

Fred Delforge
ZiCaZic, april 12, 2011
Translated by Mariëlla Tirotto
Original review: http://www.zicazic.com/zicazine/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=8286