Record Rack: Tine Bruhn & Johnny O’Neal, Jackie Ryan and Karen Souza

Three Queens, All Aces

By Brian Arsenault

This is a time of remarkable female jazz singers.  So many who are so good. Undoubtedly changes in social mores have increased the pool of women willing to run the risks of being a jazz singer and the industry‘s willingness to accept them. But I think there’s more than a sociology treatise here. I think there’s magic involved, as there was with the surge in bop jazz musicians in the late 40s and great rock in the second half of the sixties. Leave it to others to explain. We get to enjoy.

 Tine Bruhn & Johnny O’Neal:

 nearness (Burner Records)

Think of a time when a singer simply stood next to the piano.  She sings, he plays and, oh yeah, there’s a great tenor sax on some songs. Now’s the time and Tine Bruhn makes the most of it with the marvelous jazz pianist Johnny O’Neal and young sax player, Stacy Dillard. She’s deep into the American songbook of Cole Porter, Hoagy Carmichael, Johnny Mercer and others and she has the remarkable ability to make each song hers by the end.  “The Nearness of You,” from which the album title is drawn, is simply seven and a half minutes of bliss.  If an album can glow with light, this one does.

Jackie Ryan with John Clayton & Friends:

 Listen Here (Open Art Productions)

Jackie Ryan, I think, could sing just about anything and on this album she just about does. Jazzy, bluesy, in English and in Spanish, old classics and new compositions. Her “I Loves You Porgy” is nearly overwhelming. Hell, it is overwhelmingly beautiful. So is band mate John Clayton’s “Before We Fall In Love,” lyrics by the great Bergmans to touch the soul. Sidemen? You want sidemen: Gerald Clayton on piano, Graham Dechter on guitar, Gilbert Castellanos on a trumpet born in Mexico and journeyed to American jazz. More. I’m not even sure this is a jazz album. Not completely.  Jackie kind of defies categories.  She’s music.

 Karen Souza:

Hotel Souza (Music Brokers)

We begin in a Paris hotel with an affair, “prisoners of desire” wondering “how did it get this far.” It goes on like that. For the whole album. Sexuality in song. Longing, desire, surrender. This hotel where “I’ve Got it Bad” for “Delectable You” even if you’ll “Break My Heart.” Her version of Marvin Gaye’s “Heard it Through the Grapevine” is 110 degrees in the shade. Phew, well Marvin was about heat after all.  Yet underneath all the physical attraction and consummation there is a sadness at the impermanence of affairs and attraction. In the end, you have to “Lie to Me.”

To read more reviews, posts and columns from Brian Arsenault click HERE.

CD Review: Halie Loren’s “Stages”

Halie Loren

 Stages (White Moon Productions)

 By Brian Arsenault

It’s 2 a.m. when I put on Halie Loren’s reissue Stages, so I keep the volume low as to not bother Kath.  Doesn’t matter. Loren’s voice comes through soft but contralto clear as always; impeccable phrasing, melodious poetry emerging from the little player on the cabinet.

The cat Sage comes in after the piano introduction to the first song, “Danger In Loving You,” and sits on the carpet to listen as soon as Halie’s voice comes up. She doesn’t often do that. As soon as the song ends, Sage heads for her food dish but she comes back for “Sunny Afternoon,” the second song.

Halie Loren has that effect on audiences, it seems of all creatures, on this album recorded at two separate concerts a couple years ago.  “Danger In Loving You” is sung regretful while “Sunny Afternoon” is downright sassy.  One thinks that Ray Davies would be pleased with her sense of the vagaries of life and the honky tonk piano.

Halie Loren

But I’m trying to be very careful about the use of words like sassy and sultry and sexy which are of course true about her singing but tend to obscure artistry with connotations of femme fatale. There’s a kind of sexism about dropping those words on a female singer, a “nice ass” quality that diminishes while delighting in a woman.

Halie Loren’s  singing stands in its own right with a range of human emotion, the aforementioned remarkable phrasing, intelligent story telling, laughter and tears intermingling with accomplished technique.

She can go back to classics like the Gershwins’ “Summertime” and Hoagy Carmichael’s “Nearness  of You” as if they were written for her  and not decades before she was born. She shows that “Summertime” doesn’t need to be sung with a “do I shriek here” component. Not that she doesn’t hit it hard, she just knows where it’s soft.

Her version of “Cry Me A River” brings to mind Julie London’s biggest hit but with more edge. Anger and angst. The audience hoots its approval at the end.  She explores the musicality of Latin language, Portuguese specifically, in “The Girl from Ipanema” and makes it fresh again. Bossa Nova steps may be resurrected.

In the middle of the album there’s a three song stretch that encompasses “Free to be Loved by Me” that she penned, about the heartbreak of love.  Some of the notes will do that if the lyrics don’t. It touches at a deep level. It’s followed quickly by Billy Arnold’s  teasing “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby” to quickly lift the mood. And then follows the moody “Love Me Like a River Does.”  They call that range.

A favorite moment comes when she sings without accompaniment on “High Heel Blues,” laughing through it with the audience about high heel shoes that “go with everything in your closet.”  It brings down the house.

Her aptly titled “They Oughta Write a Song” (from the album of the same name) introduced a lot of us to Halie.  It’s an ironic take on love and life and belonged on this “live” album.  Actually, I prefer “concert album.”  What singers and musicians do in studios is live too, isn’t it, even when overproduced.

But let’s close with a consideration of recorded in the club albums. Ever hear one where you wince once in a while over a false note, mistimed solo, or too quick pacing?  Not here.  Her sidemen led by pianist Matt Treder are perfect support and I guess you know by now what I think of Loren‘s singing.

To see a terrific singer “live,” as they say, is a great but ethereal experience; quickly gone, vanished from your eyes and ears, just a memory. Fortunately for your ears and soul, this one is here whenever you want to listen.

* * * * * * * * * *

“November and Other Tales” by Brian Arsenault

.

.

Brian Arsenault’s November and Other Tales is a collection of short stories exploring the way cold comes by degrees in winter and in the human heart.  To check it out, click HERE.

Here, There & Everywhere: Sing! Sing! Sing!

By Don Heckman

Christmas caroling was a regular seasonal activity in my young life.  Growing up in an Eastern Pennsylvania rust belt city, singing carols while slip-sliding our way across icy sidewalks was as necessary to the holiday as going to Mass on Christmas eve.  In a way, it was an equally necessary counter to the darker side of what we’d done on Halloween, when enacting tricks was a lot more common than  asking for treats.

All of which went through my mind last night when Faith and I took our lovely ten year old granddaughter, Maia, to the Victorian Mansion for “Candlelight Carols” by Judy Wolman, Howard Lewis and “Sing! Sing! Sing!”  And one couldn’t have asked for a more delightfully atmospheric setting to join in a holiday music singalong than the elegant wood-paneled room that jazz fans will recall as the former site of the much-missed jazz club, “The Vic.”

At the beginning, Wolman reminded me that she, Lewis and their group of singers had been doing these holiday celebrations for 20 years.  Not only that, of course, but also their continuing programs of participatory jaunts through the rich musical landscape of the Great American Songbook.  (Programs devoted to Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Johnny Mercer, Hoagy Carmichael and others are already scheduled for 2012.)

The “Candlelight Carols” program characteristically reached out to embrace the Songbook – with selections from Irving Berlin, Frank Loesser, Rodgers & Hammerstein, etc. — as well as a collection of traditional carols.  And the format was as comfortable and inviting as a holiday evening in a close friend’s living room.

Lewis introduced each number with some fascinating background, often including nuggets of insight into the song, as well as its creators.  Then Wolman — a superb piano accompanist, backed by Chris Conner’s bass, Dick Weller’s drums and some warm melody-making from harmonica player Ron Kalina – led the way into the song.

Maia

The audience, using lyric sheets provided by Wolman, sang along enthusiastically, sometimes even more than that.  And our granddaughter, Maia, not especially familiar with all the standards, nonetheless applied her already burgeoning musicality to every song, singing, smiling, enjoying every minute of this engaging new experience.

And what a collection of songs it was: “It’s Beginning To Look Like Christmas,” “Silver Bells,” “My Favorite Things,” “White Christmas,” “Sleigh Ride,” “Winter Wonderland,” “The Christmas Song,” “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?”  As well as “Silent Night,” “We Three Kings,” “The First Noel” and much, much more.

Between the singalong segments, individual singers from the Sing! Sing! Sing! vocal ensemble – Chuck Marso, Anita Royal, Jackie Manfredi and Ruth Davis – soloed.  And songwriter Jim Mann presented a brand new Christmas song, “Cheers! Cheers! Cheers!”

The sidewalks weren’t icy, and there was no snow in the forecast as we left the Victorian.  But the wind was blowing, and, as we walked hand in hand to our car, the words to one of the evening’s songs – with their perfect holiday sentiments — kept coming to mind.

           “The wind is blowing

           But I can weather the storm

            What do I care how much it may storm?

            I’ve got my love to keep me warm.”