For a while now, singer/composer Fay Victor has had a residency at 55 Bar, the spunky, stalwart jazz club in Greenwich Village. The relaxed room, in operation for more than a century, is perfectly suited to her avant-garde songwriting and experimental vocalizations; given its place in jazz history, the club has witnessed more than its share of jazz innovations. Add one more to the list: Victor developed the seven songs for her latest release, Barn Songs (Northern Spy Records), under its roof.
Victor and her husband, bassist Jochem van Dijk, wrote these songs at least 20 years ago, when they were living in Amsterdam. After they moved to New York, Victor would perform them in her concerts—specifically at 55 Bar, backed only by cellist Marika Hughes and alto player Darius Jones—and over time these compositions morphed organically into something new. Spare and pointed in their messages, they feature Victor’s sterling voice in the simplest of settings, minus any sort of rhythm section. They’re all the richer for this minimal instrumentation.
Victor’s daring forays into improvisational singing (what she calls “free-song”) have earned her a spot at the forefront of the art form. Now she’ll have another perch from which to spread her influence: She recently accepted a position as one of six Artistic Directors for the Woodstock-based Creative Music Studio. With this appointment she joins a long line of influential musicians who have contributed to the organization, including singer Ingrid Sertso, pianist Karl Berger, multi-instrumentalist Ornette Coleman, composers John Cage and Gunther Schuller, conductor Gil Evans, educator Buckminster Fuller, and painter Willem DeKooning. To hear her latest free-songs, you can take in the new album’s official launch at Joe’s Pub on Mar. 20. But if you want to hear them in situ, she’ll be at 55 Bar on Mar. 26.
The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture has a weighty mission: It provides a “forum to highlight the true, the good, and the beautiful as they have been expressed throughout the ages”. The Sheen Center is where vocalist Dominique Eade will be fronting the Darcy James Argue Ensemble and the New England Conservatory of Music Alumni Band on Mar. 21, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of NEC’s illustrious jazz program. Like Victor, Eade has had enormous influence on improvisatory singing, not just for her collaborations with leading creative musicians like pianist Ran Blake, saxophonist André Vida and woodwinds player Brandon Evans, but for her work as an educator. During her decades as an NEC faculty member, she’s fostered the talents of a huge swath of prominent jazz singers, among them Luciana Souza, Kate McGarry, Sara Lazarus, Roberta Gambarini, Sofia Rei, Jo Lawry, Michael Mayo and Rachael Price. That’s a lot of truth, goodness, and beauty. (For a quieter but no lesser event, Eade will present a duo concert with NEC alum and former faculty member, pianist Fred Hersch, at Jazz Standard on Mar. 20.)
This month Jazz at Lincoln Center carries out its own weighty mission—to celebrate freedom, with jazz as its central metaphor—with three powerhouse vocalists. First up is Jazzmeia Horn, currently on tour with her latest Grammy-nominated album, Love and Liberation (Concord). She’ll present The Artistry of Jazzmeia Horn, an evening of straight-ahead originals and re-conceptualized covers from that release, in the Appel Room on Mar. 6-7. A week later, on Mar. 13-15, saxophonist/singer Camille Thurman will play Dizzy’s as a featured artist with the Darrel Green Trio—that’s in addition to her regular gig as part of the JALC Orchestra. (Since its inception, Thurman is the only woman to have worked an entire season with JLCO.) And last, on Mar. 25, vocalist/flutist Melanie Charles will present Thank You Abbey Lincoln at Dizzy’s, in an expression of gratitude to the iconic vocalist, composer, actor, and civil rights activist.
Life without pitch adjustment: On Feb. 25 to Mar. 1, Cécile McLorin Salvant returns to Village Vanguard, the stage that very few singers get to cross. Her partly live album from a 2016 Vanguard gig, Dreams and Daggers (Mack Avenue) won a Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album and she’s been a regular there since. The swing vocal trio Duchess (Amy Cervini, Hilary Gardner, and Melissa Stylianou), too, has recorded at a venerable New York jazz institution: They’ll drop the much anticipated, aptly titled Live at Jazz Standard! (Anzic Records), at—of course—Jazz Standard on Mar. 31.
(Reprinted from the March 2020 issue of New York City Jazz Record)