I love when artists create original and exploratory music. It shows that they are trying to do something new with their craft. What I don’t understand is when they take a song that we are all familiar with and create it into something that is completely unrecognizable. Why not just write your own tune? Here are two recent releases that make my point in varying degrees.
Tenor saxist Jessica Jones and pianist Connie Crothers perform as a duet at the Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse for a live performance on this disc. The originals are free form improvisations and actually make more coherent sense than trying to figure out where exactly the theme is on tunes such as “All the Things You Are” and “There Will Never Be Another You.” Jones has a nice tone and is adroit in her delivery, and the simpatico interplay with Crothers is commendable. You just would have to charge a lawyer a Finder’s Fee for the melody.
Vocalist Vanissa Santi has a wonderfully attractive coo to her voice, and she fronts an exceptionally adroit band with Tim Thompson/tp, Chris Aschman/tp, Jef Lee Johnson/g, John Stenger/p, Jason Fraticelli/b and Francois Zayas/dr-perc. She takes on the daunting task of going through the Billie Holiday songbook and putting it through the colors of Afro Cuban rhythms and harmonies. On their own, if you didn’t know that “Big Stuff” and “On the Sunny Side of the Street” were standards, you wouldn’t have to compare them to other versions. Thompson’s trumpet on the abstract formere, and the assertive rhythms on the postmodern latter are exciting and fresh. An attractively eerie “What’s New” is agonizingly desultory, while there is fire in Santi’s beliy as she drives over the rapid percussion on “Stormy Weather.” The album is a success on its own terms if you don’t compare the tunes to Lady Day’s originals, as there’s a whole different feel here. Accept her on her own terra.
New Artists Records
Sunnyside Records