Usually the mix of jazz and poetry conjures up images of beatniks reciting obscure lines with a background of freely improvised horns. As she demonstrated at Royce Hall Saturday night, vocalist Luciana Souza has completely transformed that concept, combining the poems by the likes of Leonard Cohen and Emily Dickinson with a Brazilian sense of Saudade to create a whole new genre of musical moods.
The fact is, Souza could keep an audience rapt if she simply sung an actuarial report. This evening, she balanced the 100 minute concert with wordless Brazilian tunes, lyrically rich sambas in Portuguese and deeply reflected poetic material from her album The Book of Longing. Teamed with the flexible guitarist Chico Pinheiro and bassist Scott Colley, Souza accompanied herself on drums, cymbals, triangle and tambourine while creating luminous moods with long night shadows on pieces like “”The Paris Sky,” “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark” and “Remember.”
Souza’s vocal was astonishing, as her English songs gave hints of Joni Mitchell’s Laurel Canyon days as on “Alms”, but with a control that had her ending songs with her voice fading away like a morning mist. Colley provided a bluesy throb to the Emily Dickinson piece, with Pinheiro creating droplets of morning dew and Souza glowing like a sunrise as she sang the traditional “Pra Machucar Mu Coracao.”
Her wordless material had her floating like a pelican over the gentle white caps provided by Colley and Pinheiro on “ Um Filme” while she gave earthy tribal dynamics over the galloping pulse on a passionate “Lila.”
Alternating between English and Brazilian, Souza closed the evening with a delicate and intimately sublime “Waters of March” before encoring with a celebrative “Forro Brasil.” Like all great poets, Souza was able to excrete the deepest emotions out of songs, taking the appreciative audience to deep recesses and then to joyful heights. Isn’t that the call of all minstrels?
Upcoming shows include Bela Fleck & Abigail Washburn 12/06, Lettuce & John Scofield 03/20, Roberto Fonseca & Fatoumata Diawara 03/23 and Ofertorio 04/07