Jane Monheit first attracted attention as the runnerup in the 1998 Thelonious Monk Institute Vocal Competition held in New York, but her musical sensibility seems better suited to Broadway show tunes than jazz standards.
In fact, the Long Island native has been compared to no less than Barbra Streisand for her tendency to wring every drop of emotion from a song without losing control of the melody or the phrasing — a coloratura cabaret singer with ear-bending technique.
Monheit reached the apogee of this florid style on her 2007 collection "Surrender," where the material, the orchestral arrangements and the voluptuous production all combine to cinematic effect. Even the three bossa nova numbers she sings in Portuguese — one with veteran Brazilian singer-songwriter Ivan Lins — are given a treatment less like Joao Gilberto and more like Jackie Gleason's lush easy-listening albums from the early 1960s.