By María Eugenia Guerra

Come Away with Me
Norah Jones
Blue Note Records

A recent listen to a National Public Radio segment on jazz pianist Norah Jones pulled me off the highway and into Hogwild Records in San Antonio to purchase her first release. Jones, a Texan with roots in Brooklyn and a former student at the University of North Texas, debuts with Come Away with Me, a Blue Note record.

Jones' original style for these old and new smoldering melodies of love and loss, like Hoagy Carmichael's "The Nearness of You" and Hank Williams, Sr.'s "Cold, Cold Heart," are a distinct pleasure to hear. Rolling Stone suggests she is in touch with her inner Joni Mitchell, and my ears agree that this young songstress (she's 22) is a moving storyteller whether she's doing it in pillow talk, smoky jazz, or country.

The daughter of sitarist Ravi Shankar and Sue Jones, Jones' romance with jazz began at the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas. A summer trip to New York in between semesters at UNT placed young Jones in the company of songwriters and performers at the Living Room, an experience she says fostered her foray into writing her own songs.

Come Away with Me features two originals by Jones including the title song and "Nightingale," both short, intimate gems of sentiment. The album also features "The Long Day Is Over," which she co-wrote with acoustic guitarist Jesse Harris, the author of four other compositions on this album of sense-tingling, pretty music.

Feeling tired
By the fire
The long day is over

The wind is gone
Asleep at dawn
The embers burn on

With no reprise
The sun will rise
The long day is over
--Norah Jones
& Jesse Harris