René Marie, I Wanna Be Evil (With Love to Eartha Kitt), Motéma

From 2013. Setting off at quite a clip before you know it after a crescendo, cackle, wonky horn flourishes and all on ‘I’d Rather Be Burned as a Witch’ René Marie is as spirited a jazz performer as you could ever possibly wish for. A late starter …

Published: 1 Dec 2019. Updated: 4 years.

From 2013. Setting off at quite a clip before you know it after a crescendo, cackle, wonky horn flourishes and all on ‘I’d Rather Be Burned as a Witch’ René Marie is as spirited a jazz performer as you could ever possibly wish for. A late starter only beginning her professional music career in 1997 at the age of 42, the Virginia-born singer/songwriter has a kicking pianist along for the ride in super-supple support (that’s Kevin Bales), lively very informed bass from Elias Bailey, and requisite classy time keeping from drummer Quentin Baxter plus long time Wynton close musical associate Wycliffe Gordon on trombone, trumpeter Etienne Charles, and tenorist Adrian Cunningham on board the three of them arpeggiating and wailing towards the end of 'I'd Rather Be' before Marie signs off with “got a match?”. There’s lovely clarinet from Cunningham at the beginning of ‘C’est si bon’ as Marie continues in more demure fashion after the raucous opener.

In the notes Marie recalls first being aware of Kitt playing Catwoman as she watched her on TV as a young girl, and later actually seeing her perform at the Carlyle in New York. Kitt has never left her, and this album resurrects Kitt's indomitable spirit for sure. I must confess I’m not familiar with all of Marie’s albums but I enjoyed Black Lace Freudian Slip, also released by Motéma, and this is even better. It doesn’t feel retro but it sounds timeless and Marie is a classic jazz singer no doubt about it, a hint of Betty Carter here and there maybe, and you could cite the late Etta James as well too while you're at it. In a year when Cécile McLorin Salvant has dazzled with her debut WomanChild this fits in nicely with vintage and to an extent theatrical jazz evocative of a bygone age. Ten tracks include a great version of ‘Peel Me a Grape’ (makes Diana Krall’s seem quite tame by comparison) and best of all a nuanced take on Cole Porter’s ‘My Heart Belongs to Daddy’. It’s one of the most sensual female jazz vocals albums to come along in a long while, up there with McLorin Salvant’s, and Liane Carroll’s collection of torch songs, Ballads. Marie tucks in one of her own songs, the complex and absorbing ‘Weekend’, at the end. SG

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Tomasz Stańko, Wisława, ECM

From 2013. I’ve loved Tomasz Stańko’s music since the first time I heard him play, back in the early-1990s. And for once it was hearing the music live before listening to any of the records. That dramatically changes your perception of an artist, …

Published: 1 Dec 2019. Updated: 4 years.

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From 2013. I’ve loved Tomasz Stańko’s music since the first time I heard him play, back in the early-1990s. And for once it was hearing the music live before listening to any of the records. That dramatically changes your perception of an artist, doesn’t it? Substantially more than even seeing a video. Actually seeing a video, despite the curiosity value, is pretty worthless unless it’s a fully blown artistic interpretation of the music, and sadly that doesn’t happen very often.

You go away with so much more information by seeing someone live, how the artist moves and interacts; how they carry themselves; all the non-verbal communicative signs; the way they speak if they speak. It’s still only a small part of the live experience. Stańko has assembled a new band called the New York Quartet for his latest studio album Wisława, a double album.

Stańko’s band is Reflex pianist David Virelles, also playing prepared piano and celeste on Chris Potter’s album The Sirens; Californian bassist Thomas Morgan now living in Harlem; and the drummer the avant garde cognoscenti adore, the Brooklyn-based drummer Gerald Cleaver who played a great set at the Vortex just last year with Lotte Anker and Craig Taborn.

Recorded in June not long after a brief tour in Europe the theme of the album ties in with the poetry of the great Wisława Szymborska, hence its title: Wisława. Stańko performed with the Nobel laureate late in her life, and a number of the album’s compositions are inspired directly by her work. And they are sublime, particularly the title track ballad and ‘Mikrokosmos’. Stańko can stop you dead in your tracks with the honesty and emotion of his playing, the blues connotation, and the sheer abstraction of it all. Wisława is this and much more, his best album since Leosia and a potent reminder of the artistry of the man. SG