(Republished from the February 2024 issue of New York City Jazz Record)
When Nora York died in 2016 at the age of 60, she left behind an distinguished body of creative works: theatrical performance pieces, commissioned concert compositions, soundtracks, several jazz albums (including one with bandleader Maria Schneider), and one TED talk. Her warmly colored voice, at once soothing and challenging, proved an apt vehicle for her boundlessly eclectic ideas. These ideas have only grown in relevance over the years—as evidenced by Rain (Good Mood Records), a 10-track collection of York’s later creations.
This posthumous release draws primarily from two of York’s stage productions, created in collaboration with composer Jamie Lawrence, now the album’s producer. Their workshop production of Water, Water Everywhere—a prescient warning about climate change presented at the BRIC Performing Arts Center in 2013—gives up two tracks: the show’s title cut, an amalgam of York’s original lyrics (inspired by interviews with climate scientists) and her compositional take on Handel’s Water Music, followed by “Tiny Blue Green Creature,” a sobering musical monologue in a chamber setting.
Again alluding to the classical canon, York and Lawrence reworked Tosca as a pop-folk theatre piece for JUMP, which premiered at The Public Theater in 2011. Six of the new album’s tracks derive from this show: Standouts are “Love and Beauty,” a charming operatic-folk aria; “Love Only Me,” surprising in its rhythmic vitality; and “Vissi Darte,” the production’s heart-gripping finale. This tune didn’t close the album, however; this prime spot went to “When I Am Laid in Earth,” an elegiac version of Henry Purcell’s lament. “Remember me,” York sings on this track, her voice ever clear, ever present.
Jay Clayton, another vocal jazz innovator, battled cancer for a year before she passed on Dec. 31. She’d spent more than 60 of her 82 years championing vocal jazz, specializing in the type of free vocal improvisation that few can master. Composers and instrumentalists as diverse as Charles Mingus, Steve Reich, Ornette Coleman, Muhal Richard Abrams, John Cage, Lee Konitz, Fred Hersch and Jerry Grannelli were all drawn to her talent—and with these and others, she recorded more than 30 albums and sang in countless live performances the world over.
Clayton was also a master educator who taught the vocal jazz program at the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle and at the Universität für Musik in Graz, Austria; later she would join the jazz faculties at John’s Hopkin’s Peabody Institute and Princeton University. But New York singers know her best through the teaching studio she shared in Chelsea with “jazz child” Sheila Jordan. There she held private lessons, rehearsals, and group vocal improv classes, surrounded by decades’ worth of books, photos, and music lionizing the jazz greats. She now joins this pantheon.
In July 2022, Christian McBride honored the tight musical relationship between traditional pop icons Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee with a singular concert at the Hollywood Bowl—imagine Billie Eilish, Debbie Harry, Dianne Reeves, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Seth MacFarlane, Bettye LaVette, and Gretchen Parlato fronting the Count Basie Orchestra. This month McBride re-creates this powerful performance at NJPAC with Celebrating Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra & Friends: A Tribute in Song (Feb. 8). It’s a different lineup, same vibe: Both Mitchell and LaVette return, joining new castmates Aloe Blacc, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Paula Cole, and Rachel Price, along with McBride’s own strings-sweetened big band. The group promises to deliver Peggy Lee favorites (“Fever,” “Is That All There Is,” “It’s a Good Day,” “Let’s Love”) and Sinatra classics (“Luck Be a Lady,” “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” “One For My Baby,” “Nice Work If You Can Get It”).
This year, several preeminent singers will honor Saint Valentine while in town: There’s Morgan James at Dizzy’s and Lizzie Thomas at Django (Feb. 14), Catherine Russell at Birdland (Feb. 13-17), and Dianne Reeves in Lovestruck at JALC Rose (Feb. 16-17). And for his 10th annual Valentine’s Day concert in New York, Gregory Porter will take to the stage at Carnegie Hall (Feb. 16).
For something less pink, look for Gabrielle Cavassa with the Joshua Redman Group at Murmrr (2/8), Bilal at City Winery (Feb. 29), or American Patchwork Quartet at Joe's Pub (2/10), where they’ll launch their debut album and affirm their “mission to reclaim the immigrant soul of American Roots Music.”