The press release pack for The Midnight Hour included the following:
Last year, pianist Yoko Miwa and vocalist Mikayla Shirley began performing together during The Mad Monkfish’s Midnight Sessions in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and those evenings became the foundation of their musical collaboration. Their intimate duo sets have quietly become one of the Boston jazz scene’s hidden treasures. If you’ve been fortunate enough to catch one of these late-night performances, you’ve witnessed two musicians exploring an eclectic repertoire that moves effortlessly between jazz standards, Broadway songs, Brazilian music, classic pop, and contemporary songwriting. What unites the material is not genre, but a shared belief in the power of a great song. There was never really a more fitting title for their debut recording than The Midnight Hour, since the album captures both the atmosphere and the spirit of those late-night performances.
This is very much a late-night album; pared back with all the focus on melody and lyrics and two artists in sync with each other. However, does all that make for a good studio album to sit and listen to at home without that late-night jazz club ambiance, that shared experience, that anticipation that comes from being a part of a live performance?
Let’s start at the beginning with Alfie, written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Now I like this number and am most familiar with the Cilla Black recording from 1965. The accompanying piano playing from Yoko Miwa is good throughout with controlled dynamic changes. The vocals are clean and smoothly delivered with an R&B intonation, which, for me, detracts from the grounded emotional connection that imbues Black’s delivery. God Only Knows shows a difference in vocal delivery from Shirley in that it feels like she is singing from within the song: she has got under the skin of what Brian Wilson wrote and conveys the essence of the composition. I find this a fascinating interpretation of a well known pop tune and thoroughly enjoyed how Miwa and Shirley put the number across.
Garota De Ipanema (The Girl From Ipanema) is another well known tune that works well. Shirley sings in Portuguese, which is good to hear, and that sounds like, in a positive way, it alters the phrasing sightly as well as emphasizing the rhythmic ebb and flow of the song. The dynamics of the number come from Miwa at the piano, which, when combined with Shirley’s delivery, make for an engaging listen. Modinha, by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Vinícius de Moraes, is also sung in Portuguese by Shirley and it sounds very much as if she has a personal connection with the lyrics (it sounds like she both understands and feels the words that she is singing) and the piano accompaniment fits perfectly.
In some ways I struggled with The Midnight Hour because although I like this pairing as a duo, I enjoyed Miwa’s playing and Shirley’s voice, I didn’t feel that I was fully engaged with the album. In part I think this was because, in my opinion, the running time was too long and there was not enough variation in styling to fully engage me, as the listener, over the thirteen tracks recorded. As stated earlier in this review, this is a late-night jazz album that could have been a good late-night jazz album with three or four fewer tracks.
The Midnight Hour will be available from Friday, 28 August 2026
Tracklist: 01 – Alfie; 02 – Street Where You Live; 03 – God Only Knows; 04 – Garota De Ipanema (The Girl From Ipanema); 05 – I Loves You, Porgy; 06 – I Didn’t Know What Time It was; 07 – Too Late Now; 08 – But Not For Me; 09 – Tenderly; 10 – Love Dance; 11 – Centerpiece; 12 – Modinha; 13 – Song Of Joy.
Musicians: Yoko Miwa (piano), Mikayla Shirley (voice)
