(Reprinted from the March 2022 issue of New York City Jazz Record)
Sheila Jeannette Dawson was an unlikely champion of the bebop movement. Born in Detroit in 1928 (on the same day as Mickey Mouse) and raised in a small coal-mining town in Pennsylvania, Dawson had few professional prospects. But a chance meeting with Charlie Parker when she was still a teenager—and too young to enter the clubs where he played—firmed her resolve to sing jazz. Just a few years later, under Parker’s tutelage, she would assume her place in jazz history as a singular voice in bebop.
Now 93, Sheila Jordan continues to perform and record with relentless vigor. (She took the name of her husband Duke Jordan, Parker’s pianist, in the early 1950s.) Despite the pandemic, she plays out whenever she can, and in March 2021 Steeplechase captured all this indomitability on a record date with trioTrio, the airtight ensemble of pianist Jacob Sacks, bassist David Ambrosio, and drummer Vinnie Sperrazza. The label released trioTRIO meets Sheila Jordan last month.
This album, with Jordan on six of its eight tracks, documents the singer’s incomparable feel for subtle melodic alterations, as on the gently swinging “Everything Happens To Me”, the wistful ballad “Fair Weather” and her infectious original, “Workshop Blues”. But it’s on the tunes where she scats on personalized lyrics that we gain insight not only into her artistry but into the intimate history that informs it. On “The Bird / Confirmation” Jordan lauds her friend and mentor. On “All God’s Chillun Got Rhythm / Little Willie Leap” she recalls her early bebop gigs in 1950s Detroit. And on “If I Should Lose You” she recognizes the beauty of love. It’s a sacred gift, she tells us.
This message has not changed much in the 62 years since Jordan recorded Comes Love: Lost Session 1960, which Capri Records released last year. Listening to these albums side by side, we can note the changes in Jordan’s voice over time—but what remains steadfast throughout her decades of performing is the warm appreciation for her audiences, her musicians and her lifelong friends. Jordan will perform with bassist Cameron Brown, one such friend, at Pangea on March 2.
When the pandemic struck in March 2020, singer/composer Somi was just about to present her original musical theater piece, Dreaming Zenzile, at the prestigious Repertory Theatre of St. Louis in Missouri. With this project subsequently on hold, Somi turned her attention to the unplanned release of Holy Room: Live at the Alte Oper, a concert recording that she’d made with the Frankfurt Radio Big Band in 2019. This record would go on to score Somi her first Grammy nomination.
This nomination is just one in a long list of accolades: Somi also has been named a Soros Equality Fellow, a TED Senior Fellow, a Doris Duke Fellow and a two-time recipient of the NAACP Image Award, and she’s currently pursuing a doctorate in Creative Practice & Critical Inquiry at Harvard University. These honors acknowledge the necessary work that Somi does in reclaiming and elevating the cultural contributions of underrepresented members of our society, especially those of African descent. (Born in Zambia and raised in Illinois, Somi is of Rwandan and Ugandan heritage.)
This month, Somi will launch Zenzile: The Reimagination Of Miriam Makeba, the studio version of her deferred stage show, through Salon Africana, her own arts initiative. The album celebrates the music of South Africa’s Miriam Makeba, the first African singer to achieve international celebrity, and features the vocals of some high-profile collaborators, including Gregory Porter, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Angelique Kidjo and Seun Kuti. Equally masterful is Somi herself, who will front the album release concert at the Apollo on March 19. She also will star in the off-Broadway production of the stage show, which opened the St. Louis Rep’s 2021-22 season last fall and is booked to visit New York in May-June of this year.
In recognition of Women’s History Month, Flushing Town Hall will sponsor three vocal concerts in March: Songs of Sarah Vaughan on March 4, with impressive Broadway veteran Rosena Hill Jackson; You Give Me Fever—The Peggy Lee Songbook on March 10, with Barbara Rosene, acclaimed big band singer with Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks; and Oye Como Va—A Tribute to The Great Women of Latin Music, on March 31, with Deborah Resto, who’s worked with the likes of Enrique Iglesias, Tito Puente, Ruben Blades, Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin.
Catherine Russell follows her Valentine’s run at Blue Note last month with an afternoon interactive concert for families at JALC on March 26. In What Is The Blues? Russell will discuss the musical underpinnings of this uniquely American art form with help from a live band. And two days before, on March 24, Russell with perform with the American Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in a Duke Ellington tribute originally scheduled for March 2020.