(Reprinted from the December 2021 issue of New York City Jazz Record)
Almost two years into a bio-war, we’ve become accustomed to more constrained ways of living—and new ways of connecting with each other. Several vocal artists have taken on the subject of how we connect in times of crisis and transmuted their insights into musical narratives.
Lisbon-native composer/vocalist Sara Serpa plumbs the psychological complexities of emigration with Intimate Strangers, an expansion of the themes addressed in her June 2020 work, Recognition: Music For a Silent Film, both on Biophilia Records. Last year’s release, which delved into her parents’ witness to Portuguese colonialism in Africa, drew on spoken texts from anti-colonialist writer Amilcar Cabral. Similarly, this latest project renders tales from the book A Stranger’s Pose, by Nigerian writer Emmanuel Iduma (who narrates), into emotionally searing vocal compositions entwined with spare piano and synthesizer accompaniment. Besides Serpa, singers Aubrey Johnson and Sofía Rei give voice to the displaced and the seeking in tracks like “How Do You Know Where To Go”, “In Due Course” and “For You I Must Become A Tree”. The album hits stores on Dec. 3, and Serpa will lead the album’s musicians in a release concert at Jazz Museum in Harlem on Dec. 14.
On her newest album, Songs From Other Places (Candid), singer Stacey Kent, too, discusses the vexing dialectic of hominess versus wanderlust—or, as she writes in the liner notes, the feeling of “unbelonging” that has attended her career as a world-traveling musician and an American ex pat in London. With lyrics by Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro and music by saxophonist Jim Tomlinson, the album’s originals (“I Wish I Could Go Travelling Again”, “Craigie Burn”, “Tango in Macau”) recall with some wistfulness those earlier times of easy motion and vista-gazing. Kent will introduce the album to New York audiences at Birdland Dec. 7-11.
Paul Jost recorded the self-produced While We Were Gone during the early days of the pandemic, when Soapbox Gallery in Brooklyn stood out as one of the few venues that was readily available to offer streaming concerts. On this live recording the ever-amiable Jost turns uncharacteristically toward the social and the political: Disc one, “Poetic Justice”, uses Americana (“Shenandoah”, “The Star-Spangled Banner”) as the intro to a challenge in verse (“Lies of Convenience”) and a keening ballad in memory of George Floyd (“Forever”). And disc two, “An Appeal For Reason”, opens with a speech against the violence of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, before segueing into a pointed, a cappella verse of “If I Ruled The World”. Jost returns to Soapbox Gallery with his quartet on Dec. 14.
Borrowing from her expertise as a music therapist, Noa Fort fosters a measure of peace during trying times with Everyday Actions (Ears&Eyes), her second album as a leader/composer. The nine tracks on the album center on Fort’s vocal melodies, each wordless and grounded and remarkably soothing. Fort’s Everyday Actions concert happens on Dec. 3 at the Church Street School for Music and Art.
Superstar jazz vocalists Esperanza Spalding and Cécile McLorin Salvant each contribute a tune to the six-label, all-star recording extravaganza, Relief. These nine never-released tracks represent both originals (Christian McBride on his “Brother Malcolm”) and standards (John Batiste on “Sweet Lorraine”). Spalding co-wrote and sang “back to who”, featuring frothy layers of spinning vocal lines, and Salvant digs deep into an early blues sonority on “Easy Come, Easy Go”. The album benefits the Jazz Foundation of America’s COVID-19 Musicians’ Emergency Fund, a financial lifeline to musicians harmed by the pandemic.
Back in October, Blue Note’s artist Norah Jones issued her first holiday album, I Dream of Christmas. Like many musicians this season, with her new release Jones delivers some reassurance that things will get better. Jones’s earthy voice is singularly suited to this kind of mission: The Chipmunk’s hit, “Christmas Don’t Be Late”, with its dragging backbeat and chirpy choral overdubs calms as it amuses, and Lee Mendelsohn’s “Christmas Time Is Here” is no less cheery for Jones’ darker coloration on the cartoon classic. Likewise, her version of “White Christmas”, bouncier than the known ballad renditions, revels in the tune’s hidden optimism.
As seasonal gigs go, the vaccinated might consider the following: Kat Edmonson in "Holiday Swingin!” at Le Poisson Rouge on Dec. 11; Molly Ryan in "A Jazzy Christmas" at Symphony Space on Dec. 18; and Allan Harris "Sings A Nat King Cole Christmas" at Birdland Dec. 23-24.