http://nz.entertainment.yahoo.com//090623/5/czpu.html

Streisand hits jazz on first studio album in 4 yrs

Columbia Records said the album "Love Is The Answer" is Streisand's first full-length collection of new studio recordings since 2005's "Guilty Pleasures" and her first album since "Live In Concert 2006."

Last year, Streisand was preoccupied with the U.S. election campaign but the singer-actress said this year she had managed to get back to the business of entertaining with a new president in the White House as she was able to relax again.

"'Love Is The Answer' presents the artist as a cabaret and jazz singer of emotional clarity, depth and maturity," Columbia Records, a unit of Sony Corp, said in a statement.

On the new album, Streisand works for the first time with Grammy-winning Krall and her quartet of guitar, bass, and drums as well as songwriter Johnny Mandel, whom she worked with on her 1993 "Back to Broadway" album.

Song titles for the album have yet to be announced.

Streisand, 67, has blazed an extraordinary trail through music, theater, film and television in the four decades since she became the toast of Broadway.

She is the winner of 10 Grammys, two Academy Awards -- Best Actress, "Funny Girl" and Best song, "Evergreen" -- and numerous Emmys. Last year she was inducted as a Kennedy Centre honoree.

(Writing by Belinda Goldsmith, Editing by Miral Fahmy)