(Reprinted from the April 2023 issue of New York City Jazz Record)
Photo: Jacob Blickenstaff
Forty years ago guitarist/singer John Pizzarelli released his debut album, I'm Hip (Please Don't Tell My Father) (P-VINE). The father in this scenario is famed guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli, who passed in 2020—just one of the jazz world’s many profound losses to Covid. John, like his other siblings, follows in his father’s outsized footsteps; to date, he’s recorded more than 20 solo albums and contributed to scores more as a guest. This month he adds another title to this impressive body of work: Stage & Screen (Palmetto), a carefully parsed collection of 12 songs from mainstream musicals and films.
These traditional pop songs perform a particular function in the narratives they serve—the sung words and musical moods move the storytelling along. In this regard they are rich in dramatic impact, a value that was top-of-mind for the lyricists and composers behind these works. For Stage & Screen John culls tunes from the best ampersand-linked writing teams, like Kander & Ebb, Rodgers & Hart, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Youmans & Caesar, Stein & Green/Comden, Bernstein & Green/Comden, Cahn & Styne, and Lerner & Lane. He then adds his own imprimatur to these well-crafted songs—a near-plaintive vocal on “Tea For Two”, a rarely heard verse on “As Time Goes By”, a Django-esque turn on the comedic uptempo “A Coffee In A Cardboard Cup”. Most impressive is his locomotive scatting on tunes like “Too Close For Comfort” and “I Love Betsy” and his flawless fretwork on instrumental tracks like the ballad “Some Other Time” and the shifting medley “Oklahoma Suite”. These instrumentals (with bassist Mike Karn and pianist Isaiah J. Thompson) demand as much interpretive skill as does a vocal line—something John seems to know intuitively. The John Pizzarelli Trio appears at Jazz Forum in Tarrytown on Mar 31-April 1, gearing up for the release of the anniversary album at Birdland April 25-29.
When Cécile McLorin Salvant recorded the Grammy-nominated album Ghost Song (Nonesuch), she kept one song behind. This original composition, “Mélusine”—a simple guitar-voice air that recounts a medieval tale of death, love, and phantasms—became the title track for her latest release, out last month. In choosing material for the album’s 14 tracks, Salvant turned to eclectic sources: early chant and secular music, 20th century Francophone popular music, rock opera, and her own wide-ranging jazz roots. Additionally, she sings mostly in French on the album, at times switching into English, Haitian Kreyòl, and Occitan (a romance language from Southern Europe). These creative moves signal Salvant’s increasingly more personal approach to her creative work as she tackle themes of “solitude and self-reliance and being adaptable”, she stated in the album bio.
As a pre-launch teaser, Salvant created an arthouse video containing self-footage interspersed with text, animation, and outdoor shots (birds, a lizard, gardens, a flaming building). This video, in all of its evocativeness, reflects Salvant’s serious interest in the visual arts, which seems not so much an aside to her music as its corollary. This other side of Salvant’s artistry will receive fuller expression with Ogresse, the animated film project that Salvant has been touring these last several years. In February she announced a creative partnership with Belgian animator Lia Bertels and French studio Miyu Productions to develop the film, which will feature Salvant’s music and animated characters, all based on oral fairy tales from the 19th century.
One of the stages where Salvant first unveiled the Ogresse material was JALC, where she’ll return this May. No doubt she’ll introduce Mélusine then; in the meantime, you can hear her in a tribute to Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison at Princeton University on April 12, or on Olympians, a new album by Vince Mendoza and Metropole Orkest for BMG. The Olympians of the title are musicians, like Salvant, at the height of their godlike powers, Mendoza explained.
Last month’s VoxNews attributed Both Sides Of Joni (Acme) to singer Alexis Cole. That’s almost right: Cole will in fact launch the album with pianist/arranger Monika Herzig at the Chelsea Table & Stage on April 26. But singer/producer Janiece Jaffe recorded the album with Herzig; her vocals ring and growl and whisper on this tribute to Mitchell, another protean artist. The April concert will honor Jaffe, who passed away in November.
Also at Chelsea & Table, Tawanda, winner of the 2020 Sarah Vaughan competition, officially launches Smile (Resonance), on April 21. Tawanda is the rare singer who brings optimism and hope to every lyric—this Songbook collection bursts with promise.