(Reprinted from the February 2021 issue of New York City Jazz Record)
Pianist David Budway and his wife Brianne Higgins, co-owners of Maureen’s Jazz Cellar in Nyack, NY, had been planning to fill the jazz club’s itinerary with vocalists for the entire month of January. In normal times, the five-year-old venue hosts an eclectic mix of music and entertainment: nowhere else will you find jazz headliners on the same venue listing as Dead Heads and drag queens. But last month Budway wanted to honor the memory of his sister Maureen, a jazz vocalist and educator who passed away in January 2015, by booking the likes of Sheila Jordan, Jay Clayton, Janis Siegel, and Paul Jost throughout the month. New shut-down orders for clubs in New York State scuttled these shows, however.
Also on hold, for similar reasons, are Budway’s plans to sponsor a series of live albums recorded at the club. The first of these—singer Tania Grubbs’ Live at Maureen’s Jazz Cellar (s/p)—did launch, however, albeit mid-pandemic. These 12 tracks, recorded on Memorial Day weekend 2019, recall those healthy, halcyon days with tunes that celebrate nature (Billy Strayhorn’s “A Flower Is A Lovesome Thing”), winged creatures (Jimmy Rowles/Norma Winstone’s “The Peacocks”, Leonard Cohen’s “Bird On A Wire”) and the feelings they inspire (Joni Mitchell’s “Love”, Horace Silver’s “Peace”). Grubbs’ velveteen vocals on these cleverly curated, artfully executed songs warm the heart, and her original music—a bright samba arrangement of poet Emily Dickinson’s “Hope Is A Thing With Feathers”—inspires all the sentiment the title promises.
Budway and Higgins, though whipped around by shifting regulations for live venues, have consistently offered music at Maureen’s in some way or other over the many months of the public health crisis. In this spirit, Jordan and her regular duo partner, bassist Cameron Brown, plan to keep their Jan. 30 date at the club. This concert will be available via live stream on the Maureen’s Jazz Cellar website and Facebook page—without charge, courtesy of the club. Grubbs and her husband, bassist Jeff Grubbs, play in a similarly spare duo format each Sunday, and these performances, too, are viewable via the club website and Facebook page, as well as on the Grubbs’ own page. In February, Grubbs says, they’ll be concertizing inside their Pittsburgh home, but by March the weather should be warm enough for them to broadcast again from their porch before a socially distanced audience on their front lawn.
Grammy-winning Manhattan Transfer veteran Siegel, with more than a half dozen solo albums to her credit, just released Mazel (s/p), a dozen Yiddish songs in jazz settings, arranged by pianist John DiMartino and sung in duet with cantor Daniel Kramer. This happy album, sponsored by the North Shore Jewish Center, transmits all of the inherent loveliness of traditional Jewish music without sacrificing any of Siegel’s sophisticated swing. The guest artists, too, impress for their jazz chops: vocalists Amy London, Emily Bindiger, Kevin Osborne and Aubrey Johnson.
Johnson also guested on This Is Our Environment (Next Level), the debut album of saxophonist Joseph Herbst’s forward-looking sextet. On these 14 through-composed titles, Herbst uses musical narrative, open vocals, and spoken word to draw attention to human fallibility regarding the demise of the natural world. It’s a distressing theme, to be sure, but the music is not: the album concludes with an exuberant brass send-off—an incentive to do better, perhaps.
This year, we will miss JALC’s favorite romantic, singer Freddy Cole (1931-2020), whose annual Valentine’s Day show set the standard. Two of Cole’s albums with DiMartino (who worked on six of them) received Grammy nominations for Best Jazz Album—Freddy Cole Sings Mr. B in 2010 and My Mood Is You in 2018, both for HighNote. The latter was Cole’s last release—worth a revisit just to hear “I’ll Always Leave The Door A Little Open”, a bit of hope nestled in nostalgia. And to hear DiMartino contemporaneously this Valentine’s Day, visit Jazz on 38, a live stream from the Four Seasons featuring vocalist Lizzie Thomas.
Before we forget: Two 2020 vocal releases deserve more than a passing nod. Brianna Thomas continues to amaze with her powerful delivery and soulful understanding of classic tunes (plus two originals) on Everybody Knows (Breathline Records), her sophomore album. And singer/shamisen player Emi Makabe makes a solid landing with her debut Anniversary (Greenleaf), a satisfying melding of Japanese folk, American pop and modern jazz.