The first moments of Josie Falbo's You Must Believe in Spring sweep us into a lush soundscape, through a cinematic introduction, up close and intimately to her marvelous voice. Her voice is full, rich and pure top to bottom, fluid and shapely as anything imaginable, imparting true faith into lyrics valuing a lifetime's experience, acceptance, appreciation and hope. Josie Falbo gives voice to a heartening message, that like all 13 selections here issue sincerely from the glorious musical gifts she maintains Midwestern modesty about, but which she happily shares.

"I decided I was going to do songs that have always intrigued me, that are challenging and beautiful, songs that appeal to me and speak to me," says Ms. Falbo, a 35-year-career/life-long vocalist, of her second album on Chicago's Southport label. It follows by a decade her revelatory debut, Taylor Street. "I'm drawn to melodies that aren't necessarily linear, not step-by-step things but are interesting and still beautiful." Throughout this album she enhances artful compositions' interesting bits, and realizes fresh aspects of beauty's multi-faceted potential.

Where Taylor Street was testimony to Falbo's authenticity across a range of genres ? from finger-snappers to "Ave Maria," arena-rock anthems, soulful quiet storm and the gospel rave "O Happy Day"—You Must Believe is an hour of modern day jazz art that encompasses varied but centered emotional territory. The album's ballads, bossa novas and bebop, arranged and produced to fit Falbo perfectly by Carey Deadman, recorded and mixed mostly by Jim Massoth in sectional sessions that spanned three-and-a-half years, feature a full orchestra (50 strong!), with a sensitive rhythm section and some of Chicago's finest soloists for instrumental highlights.

It's a labor of love, and as Josie sings so compellingly, a celebratory testament to the pleasures of an American popular music style that's long-established, remains evergreen and open to such an original artist's stamp. Of precedents or models for recordings of a jazz voice so plushly couched, she cites the