Claire Martin - The Guardian - Aug 2012

Claire Martin, one of the most intuitively musical mainstream jazz singers and classic-pop interpreters to have emerged in Britain, is an award-winning artist equipped with an improviser's relish for transforming familiar materials, and an instrumentalist's melodic dexterity. Martin has also been a shrewd judge of overlooked songs, and she's a relaxed, funny and charismatic occupant of a spotlight's beam. Digging into a groove, this London-born singer's swooping lines and exclamatory sounds have a drumlike punch, and her ducking and diving fluency is unshaken by the fastest tempos. But she's also a subtle and sensitive performer of moodier materials, swapping ideas seamlessly with the jazz improvisers who are her natural allies.

For her Canary Wharf gig, Martin fronts the tautly-swinging BBC Big Band in a celebration of the work of bygone female vocal geniuses such as Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Judy Garland and Peggy Lee.