JAZZ
SPOTLIGHT - Setting some new standards
Connie Evingson
"
Let It Be Jazz" (Summit Records)
***
Minneapolis-based Evingson
is hardly the first jazz singer to find inspiration in the
Lennon-McCartney catalog, the source
of recordings by John Pizzarelli, Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah
Vaughan, among numerous others. But Evingson, working closely
with pianist Mary Louise Knutson, has approached familiar (as
well as some less familiar) Beatles tunes with inventive musicality. "Blackbird," for
example, opens with a sitar sound immediately suggesting "Norwegian
Wood." But the tune suddenly shifts into the bass pattern
from Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue," with Evingson's
smooth-toned rendering of the "Blackbird" melody.
Other tunes take equally offbeat tacks: "When I'm Sixty-four" with
a tango tinge, "Oh! Darling" in a barrelhouse groove, "Can't
Buy Me Love" with a roving bass and chattering drums.
And she fills out the entertaining program with some lesser-known
Lennon & McCartney items — "The Night Before," "I'm
Looking Through You" — all sung with gently floating
rhythmic swing.
- By Don Heckman,
Special to The LA Times |
