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YOUR FREE GUIDE TO THE NYC JAZZ SCENEFEBRUARY 2015—ISSUE 154 NYCJAZZRECORD.COM

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Dianne Reevesbeautiful life

What comes through when vocalist Dianne Reeves speaks about Beautiful Life, her 2014 release for Concord Records, is her love of singing and generosity toward other singers and musicians. “More than anything else, the record is about collaboration,” she said in a phone interview from her home in Colorado. During a recent five-year hiatus from solo recording, Reeves says that she “noticed that a lot of young jazz musicians were really into the music I grew up in, that I listened to, and I thought this would be a really wonderful way to come together and work with them.” Using the music from Reeves’ youth (R&B, pop/rock, jazz) as the starting point, Reeves and drummer/producer Terri Lyne Carrington co-created an exquisitely crafted album that moves vocal jazz forward more than a few steps. Beautiful Life, which showcases 10 next-generation jazz performers alongside Reeves, received a Grammy nomination for Best Vocal Jazz Album this year. If Reeves wins on Feb. 8th, it will be the fifth Grammy of her almost 40-year career. Reeves has known Carrington for most of that career. They first met in the mid ‘70s, when a 10-year-old Carrington worked as a drummer for trumpeter Clark Terry. Carrington’s musical precocity led to several high-profile gigs as a player and eventually as a composer and producer and in these capacities she worked with Reeves on several recordings before Beautiful Life—among them The Mosaic Project (Concord), which garnered the Grammy for Best Vocal Jazz Album in 2011. While out on the road with Carrington in the days following this Grammy win, “I talked a lot about what I was feeling for the record and she was feeling it, too,” Reeves recalls of her initial discussions with Carrington about Beautiful Life. “So she started showing me ideas and those ideas turned into ‘why don’t you produce this record?’” The two decided to make a “groove-oriented” album, Reeves says, that not only pays homage to the work of musicians influenced by jazz but celebrates the fresh ideas of emerging jazz artists such as bassist/singer Esperanza Spalding and pianist Robert Glasper. In this Reeves gives credit to Carrington for acting as the bridge between different musical traditions. Carrington has “one foot firmly planted in the tradition of jazz and [one] in a lot of the new music that’s going on now,” Reeves points out. “She’s right there at Berklee [College of Music] as a professor, teaching [a new generation of] students.” (Carrington received an honorary doctorate from Berklee in 2003 and has been teaching there since 2007.) The most striking tracks on the disc are covers of tunes by Marvin Gaye, Fleetwood Mac, Bob Marley and Ani DeFranco, reimagined so as to emphasize the jazz feel in the originals. For instance, on the album’s opener, Marvin Gaye’s “I Want You”, Reeves incorporates some elements from the original—the percussion, the synth, the funk. But her version is cooler and smoother, with R&B backing vocals (by singer/guitarist Nadia Washington) and a Miles-inflected horn solo (by trumpeter Sean Jones). “The thing I loved about [Marvin Gaye’s] music

was that here was this R&B soul music steeped in a very strong jazz consciousness,” Reeves explains. “You can really hear it on an album like What’s Going On. And he had all these jazz musicians from Detroit playing on his records.” In the same way then that Gaye’s music referenced Detroit jazz, Reeves’ album “harkens back to Motown,” she says. Beyond the updated renditions of popular songs from earlier decades, the album includes some originals (Reeves’ “Tango” not only shows off her stunning facility as a Latin singer but Raul Midón’s skills as a vocal trumpeter) and one standard—an expansive, modal version of the Harold Arlen-Ted Koehler classic “Stormy Weather”. Pianist Peter Martin first arranged the song for a performance with Reeves and saxophonist Wayne Shorter at the Thelonious Monk Institute. “You know how Wayne plays—the more space that’s open, the more that voice rings out,” Reeves says. “I loved [the arrangement] so much that I just kept it.” “Stormy Weather” stands out as the only tune on the album written before Reeves was born. She doesn’t hesitate to offer an explanation for the anomaly: “Phil Moore, my former agent, had a workshop…for singers and in it he told stories about Ethel Waters and Lena Horne doing ‘Stormy Weather’ and how old the song was, but at the same time how the lyric was always relevant.” And relevant lyrics, Reeves adds, “make a big difference” in deciding what song to sing and how to sing it. “The thing that makes you want to sing a song more than anything is the lyrics,” Reeves asserts. When selecting tunes for a performance or an album she looks for “something that addresses me and that I relate to in a certain way. Usually I’ll have a backstory about it, not necessarily for the audience to know. But it is why I would do the song.” The next step of her process is to arrange the song “so that the ideas—the colors—are there in the harmonies of the song or the placement of the time.” Reeves also selects her personnel carefully. For Beautiful Life she invited two fellow Grammy-winning singers to share tracks with her—Gregory Porter, whose 2010 album Water first captured Reeves’ attention, and Lalah Hathaway, the daughter of R&B icon Donny Hathaway. Porter ’s rich, gospel sound reminds Reeves of “those great singers of the ‘60s and ‘70s”—indeed, like Donny Hathaway, she says—“Very soulful.” Their duet, the Carrington tune “Satiated (Been Waiting)”, evokes the passionate ballads of that era, in large measure because of Porter ’s deeply stirring vocals. “The thing I love about Gregory is that his voice goes with everybody…it’s like a river,” Reeves says. “It’s just right there and you want to sit by it and hear the sound of it and respect the power of it. So I call him ‘my mighty river’.” And “Lalah Hathaway is, of course, R&B royalty,” Reeves says. “She’s a fantastic musician and singer—a bright star.” Reeves uses Hathaway’s gorgeously interwoven vocals to open the Bob Marley tune,

“Waiting in Vain”. Hathaway “has this ability to stack vocals and harmonies in a way that’s really special,” she continues. “I love her—she’s my favorite singer who’s out there right now.” Reeves’ pre-eminence as a jazz artist and her ability to collaborate with singers and musicians of all ages and stripes has kept her in demand not only as a performer but as an educator. Last month she appeared as a featured performer on the PBS special American Voices, a 90-minute documentary about the American song tradition hosted by opera superstar Renee Fleming. The program reviewed highlights from the Kennedy Center’s American Voices festival, a week of master classes and performances that “brought all kinds of different vocalists together—opera, pop, gospel,” Reeves reports, adding that the main takeaway of the program is that “singing is…self-expression. Your brush stroke, your power, your color on the canvas. That was the beauty of it….We just looked at each other and said ‘This is just what we do.’ We were all together. We do our thing.” Reeves tours and performs extensively, actively embodying the principles she teaches. After the American Voices broadcast aired, she was in New York to perform in a concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC), a benefit in honor of Michael Brecker, the much beloved late saxophonist who had worked with Reeves since the early years of her career. The purpose of the concert, Reeves said, was “to bring light” to leukemia, the disease from which Brecker died. (According to the Associate Press, the concert raised $1.2 million for cancer research.) This month she will fly out to Los Angeles for the Grammy Awards and return almost immediately to New York for two nights at JALC with her own band. In and around these high-profile gigs, she’s performing in 10 other U.S. cities. Reeves doesn’t reveal in advance what she’ll be singing in any given performance; it depends on the song that she is feeling—the personal story that she wants to share—on that day, at that time. She dismisses any question of genre when it comes to tune selection. “I grew up at a time when you listened to everything. It was just music...expressed different ways. When I go to listen to someone…I’m just right there to listen to them for where they are and who they are. I don’t try to say ‘this is a jazz singer, this is a pop singer.’ This is just a great singer.” Yes—this is a great singer indeed. v

For more information, visit diannereeves.com. Reeves is at Rose Theater Feb. 13th-14th. See Calendar.

Recommended Listening: • Dianne Reeves—Eponymous (Blue Note, 1987)• Dianne Reeves—I Remember (Blue Note, 1988)• Dianne Reeves—The Grand Encounter (Blue Note, 1996)• Dianne Reeves—The Calling: Celebrating Sarah Vaughan (Blue Note, 2000)• Dianne Reeves—A Little Moonlight (Blue Note, 2002)• Dianne Reeves—Beautiful Life (Concord, 2013)

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Dianne Reevesbeautiful life

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8 FEBRUARY 2015 | THE NEW YORK CITY JAZZ RECORD