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 view optionsfont: A A size: - 12 +book reviewspeoplemystic fiction health identity music/moviesjazzgrrlsmovies rantrrrampage
260 hysterical
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As far as definitions of jazz go, I think Ian's is a pretty good one. I
don't think pyrotechnic scat displays are the sole criterion of the genre,
but there should be something to turn the head.
Last year saw the release of two jazz vocal recordings that surprised me
for very different reasons, one with its sheer inventiveness and
exuberance, the other with the avalanche of hype that greeted its
safety-first approach.
How Can I Keep From Singing? is René Marie's debut on the small but
perfectly formed MaxJazz label. Marie is one of the naturals. As the story
goes, she showed great musical promise as a youngster, then married at 18
and spent the next two decades raising her kids while singing around the
house, soaking up the oeuvres of Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald. She was
in her forties when her son coaxed her into singing to a wider audience.
Marie doesn't try to hide her influences, but her silky sound is completely
her own. In the tradition of Nancy Wilson, her approach is stunningly
intelligent and stylish. Rarely does a singer so inhabit her material and
display such delight in the unique requirements of each song. Backed by a
stellar band, including pianist Mulgrew Miller, each song is a revelation.
The Virginia-based Marie wrests "God bless the child" from Billie Holiday's
iron grip by doing it as a still-affecting fast swing, "Tennessee Waltz"
loses the saccharine and becomes a bluesy ballad of betrayal, complete with
yodel - talk about the sound of surprise! - and her self-penned "Hurry
Sundown" and "I Like You," are destined to become 21st century standards.
The enhanced CD contains a video of a riveting performance of "Thanks, but
I don't dance" which shows the singer fully at the service of song, a
purpose to every inflection. Judging from this, she must be something else
live.
Where René Marie entices with silk, Jane Monheit smothers with velvet. On
Never Never Land, her much-lauded debut, the listener is overwhelmed by the
chocolate-box ballads, the astonishingly lush voice, the vampy cover and
another dream line-up of musicians - Kenny Barron, Ron Carter, Lewis Nash,
Bucky Pizzarelli, Hank Crawford, and David Newman. This is sophisticated
stuff, but the recording lacks the whiff of sulfur that makes Rene Marie's
offering so enjoyable.
Monheit, something of a prodigy, first made her mark at the age of 20 by
placing second in the prestigious Thelonius Monk Institute Vocal
Competition in 1998. The voice is indeed astonishing - warm and rich with a
Fitzgeraldian suppleness. She is at ease with some extremely complex
note-selection and impressive melismatic phrasing, particularly on the
verse, sung a cappella, to Duke Ellington's "I Got it Bad (And That Ain't
Good)" and the dark hued ending to "Detour Ahead." But the singing, though technically faultless, sounds excessively schooled, as if a very fine
musical theatre singer had read a book on jazz theory and applied it
relentlessly to the squishier end of the repertoire. I saw her live in
London last year and she even dedicated a song to her daddy and blithered
on about how he was the number one man in her life. Eeeeeek.
That said, Monheit is precisely half Marie's age, so there is still time
to shake off the dead hand of the marketing Svengalis who would keep her
in supper-clubby mode. She'll always have the voice, and her training has
obviously been first rate. Who knows what she'll do when she gets to take a
few risks? Just give her a decade or two to grow into the songs. --Melanie St. Cyr
Buy How Can I Keep From Singing? from amazon.com or amazon.ca. |
