When the veteran music writer Don Heckman (Los Angeles Times) called Patricia Barber “one of the most utterly individual jazz performers to arrive on the scene in years,” he wasn’t referring to the vir¬tuosic spectacle that comes all too easily to today’s jazz artists. Rather, Heckman had honed in on the quiet audacity with which Barber has redefined the role of the singer–songwriter for 21st–century jazz.