Jazz criticism has long developed a convenient way of talking about vocal albums — and that way, for all its refinement, has become a trap. We know how to describe technique, school, influences. We know how to construct a genealogy — who studied under whom, who inherited whose intonations, in which city and in which year it all began. This is useful, this is honest, but behind this apparatus we often lose sight of the very thing that makes someone sit down to record an album in 2026 — the desire to say something specific, personal, their own. Maja Jakupovic, who performs under the name MAJA JAKU, represents an interesting case in this regard: her biography is serious enough that critics could occupy themselves entirely with it and never speak of anything else.

Age seven — first festival performances. Adolescence — a move to Austria and an immersion in jazz as a profession rather than a pastime. From 1991 onward — Sheila Jordan, Andy Bey, Jay Clayton as teachers. Three names, each of which pulls behind it an entire tradition of working with the voice, with material, with the contact between singer and room. Add to this a university faculty position — Jakupovic teaches — and the portrait that emerges is almost too correct, almost academically impeccable. Which is precisely why Blessed & Bewitched surprises: the album was made by someone who could have hidden behind school and reputation but chose the opposite direction.

Seven tracks in which the professional armor has been removed deliberately and demonstrably. The voice as an instrument of confession — and that statement is free of any prettiness here, because Jakupovic handles this material without the safety net of skillful interpretation of someone else’s text. This is her album in the most direct sense of the word — not a showcase of abilities, but a conversation in which she says what she thinks, in a voice that knows how to do it.

The chamber ensemble — piano, saxophone, drums, vocals — functions here as a principled decision, and certainly not as a budgetary constraint. Jakupovic trusts the instruments and the voice to carry seven tracks without outside assistance — and that trust is rewarded. The album is structured along an interior arc: from dream through loss and rebirth to something resembling a reconciliation with one’s own desires. This arc is audible in the way the temperature and density of the voice shift from track to track, in how the saxophone holds to the periphery at the start and gradually moves forward, in how the drums are barely audible in the first tracks and by the middle of the album are holding the rhythm with an altogether different confidence.

“The Witch” opens with keys that take up space slowly and without hurry, and Jakupovic‘s voice enters that space organically. The drums exist here at the edge of audibility, creating atmosphere, while the saxophone solo arrives at the right moment and departs just as rightly. The track sets the pace and tone — dreamy, nocturnal, slow.

“I’m A Queen” shifts the temperature with noticeable sharpness. MAJA JAKU‘s voice becomes richer, more demanding; ambition here sounds concrete. The saxophone steps forward and presses — no longer an atmospheric presence, but a full participant in the conversation.

“Lonely Little Fox” is a slow ballad in which MAJA JAKU allows the voice to be vulnerable without making that vulnerability look like a display. Piano and voice occupy very close space, and that closeness is the chief thing that makes the track powerful.

“Blessing Will Come” is the turning point. After two ballads in succession, the album raises its temperature and moves forward with an insistence that was absent from the material before. Jakupovic‘s contralto works here at full capacity, a gravelly saxophone adding texture. The track feels like the point from which the album begins moving in a different direction.

“Never Let Me Go” is the best track on the album. Nostalgia is present, but the album does not flirt with it. The voice climbs into registers that went unused in the preceding tracks, and the range is impressive. The piano and the vocals carry on a separate conversation — one you want to listen to on repeat.

“Rituals” brings the retro atmosphere of the 1920s — reinterpreted rather than copied. The saxophone solo is self-sufficient. The track is the only one on the album that permits itself playfulness, and that is precisely why the playfulness works.

“Everything Must Change” closes the album at the peak of sensuality. The voice draws on the full range accumulated across seven tracks — and this registers as the culmination the album has been building toward from the very beginning.

If Blessed & Bewitched has a structural problem, it is concentrated in the first half. Three slow tracks in succession — “The Witch”, “Lonely Little Fox” — demand patience from a listener who has not yet developed any particular loyalty to MAJA JAKU, if they are encountering her for the first time. The album repays that patience handsomely, but the stakes are high. MAJA JAKU seems to be consciously testing you — are you ready for this conversation, or did you come for something else? Most listeners who make it to “Blessing Will Come” won’t be going anywhere. But those who drop off before that point will do so precisely here, and the album could have avoided this with a different track order. That said, it is exactly this sequence that builds the arc I described above — and to rearrange it for the sake of a more comfortable first listen would be to betray the album’s own logic. Jakupovic chooses logic. It is the right choice.

Blessed & Bewitched is an album that does not open immediately, and it is under no obligation to do so. Maja Jakupovic traveled from a festival stage at age seven through the Austrian jazz school, and somewhere along that road decided that professional distance from her material was no longer an option. The result is a recording that operates on its own terms: chamber, nocturnal, demanding, honest. Albums with such qualities rarely find a wide audience right away. But they stay with the people who find them for a long time — and you want to return to them precisely because each subsequent listen reveals something that passed unnoticed the first time around. Blessed & Bewitched is that kind of album. Jakupovic knew what she was doing when she recorded it — and knew what she was doing when she released it in exactly this form, without concessions toward accessibility. That counts for something.

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