[Dixielandjazz] Diane Reeves

[Stephen G Barbone]

A Jazz Singer Demonstrates the Fine Art of Holding Back

By Stephen Holden - NY Times


Grandeur with refinement: that describes the aura of Dianne Reeves,  
whose concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall on Friday evening  
revealed her more than ever to be the vocal heir of Sarah Vaughan,  
whose voice could also travel anywhere. To call Ms. Reeves a warbler  
or a songbird isn’t just to trot out shopworn terms for a female jazz  
singer, but to point out how many of her introductions to songs are  
wordless, improvised exercises in tonal coloration.

These preludes have the feel of preparatory meditations before Ms.  
Reeves plunges into fresh musical territory. Within the semi- 
orchestral settings of her band — Peter Martin on piano, Romero  
Lubambo and Peter Sprague on guitars, Reginald Veal on bass and  
Terreon Gully on drums — the drums kept a lower-than-average profile.  
Rather than punching out hard rhythm, they supplied complex textural  
seasoning. Instrumental solos were tasty but never ostentatious.

That lack of exhibitionism also characterized the way Ms. Reeves  
treated many of her songs as internal monologues. A major exception  
was a lusty blues rendition of “One for My Baby (and One More for the  
Road),” in which she flirted with gut-busting volume, building the  
song up slowly to a crest, before gradually subsiding. Even at its  
peak, you sensed power held in reserve. Her restraint created its own  
kind of suspense, as you waited to see how far she would go.

“Stormy Weather,” a song that most singers belt to the rafters, was  
reconceived as a private struggle; rather than dramatize her sorrow,  
she fought to contain it. For sheer gorgeousness there was nothing to  
match two numbers — Bob Marley’s “Waiting in Vain,” its reggae pulse  
smoothed out, and a playful bossa-nova-flavored “Our Love Is Here to  
Stay” — in which Ms. Reeves’s voice danced with Mr. Lubambo’s  
sparkling guitar. During a light jazz-funk rendition of Ani DiFranco’s  
“32 Flavors” Ms. Reeves dug deeply into this defiant feminist retort  
to an insult that is also a proclamation of individual complexity: “I  
am a poster girl with no poster/I am 32 flavors and then some.”

Prefacing her own song “Nine,” an idyllic reminiscence of childhood,  
Ms. Reeves remarked that she was watching the news less these days,  
the better to celebrate innocence. As she sang of “running endless  
through a field of emerald green beneath a broad open sky” and of a  
time when “any child could wear a paper crown and be a king or queen  
at 9,” you wanted to follow her back to an age “when our imaginations  
soared on golden wings.” As the song makes clear, it is not about  
escaping reality but about rediscovering a personal source of  
spiritual nourishment.