Break’s Over is easily the most convincing jazz vocals album we have heard all through January. It’s the tops.
Singer Marianne Solivan on these eight tracks begun perfectly by a version of Betty Carter’s ‘Open the Door’ – Mwandishi bass great Buster Williams contributes hugely.
Pianist Brandon McCune ain’t too shabby either, a little Cyrus Chestnut-like – I’m recalling hearing Chestnut accompanying Carter herself in an upstairs club called Akwarium in the 1990s. So it’s an authentic stab based on a brief encounter marinated by age. McCune isn’t as gospelly as Chestnut can be in other contexts.
The meaning of communication between souls
Break Over – digressions, eh, I come over all Proustian.
Great music takes you there doesn’t it.
An invocation from the spheres brings on a technicolor terpsichore of the imagination is the only way I can think of putting it.
Drummer Jay Sawyer‘s toms work on the opener are tip top and is a highly empathetic need to know aspect. His understated fills are just right dotted all over this album issued on Orrin Evans’ currently on fire indie, Imani.
“I wondered whether music might not be the unique example of what might have been – if the invention of language, the formation of words, the analysis of ideas had not intervened – the means of communication between souls.”
― Marcel Proust, The Captive and The Fugitive from In Search of Lost Time, Volume 5 (1923)
So long, Marianne?
OK. The singer’s from Queens in New York – Solivan is influenced by Ella Fitzgerald and studied at both Berklee and the New England Conservatory. Jeremy Pelt says she’s “the modern-day paradigm to which all singers should aspire.” (That’s a quote, gleaned from spiel run on the All About Jazz site, worth if into more permanent ink getting tattooed to somewhere visible about your person, don’tcha reckon?)
Albums of Solivan’s include Re-Entry that had a fine version of Mal Waldron’s ‘Fire Waltz’ as ‘I Burn For You’ on it which Solivan wrote lyrics for. And the singer’s lyrics are excellent on the new release.
Verve in the vocalese
On the new one I love the scatting on Zingaro here dubbed ‘Drifting Through This Maze’ – covered by many down the years including Eliane Elias so wondrously in the 1990s.
Swagger and flow in the lyrics
Solivan’s swagger is best caught on Richard Rodgers No Strings music theatre number ‘Look No Further’ where Williams is a marvel – there’s great bounce there and Sawyer’s cymbal jabs are as cool as what Sugar Ray Robinson – the greatest pound for pound pugilist ever in the fight game – ever did in the ring back in the day.
We take a break here to listen to Diahann Carroll who was in on the original Broadway recording.
Choice of numbers is win, win, win
The choice of material here on Break’s Over is a win, win, win outcome. You get some familiar fare but not really immediately obvious which is a knack in the A&R-ing and must have needed a whole lot of thought and research.
Taking it real slow and working closely with the pianist Marilyn Simpson and Nancy King song ‘Moonlight To You’ (already covered so swooningly in a Metropole Orchestra setting) we reckon is a big highlight of the album as is the Spanish language spoken word intro to Solivan’s own song ‘First Desire’. Randy Weston classic ‘Little Niles’ – with Solivan’s own lyric – is also yet another reason to lap up what’s generously and rewardingly here all night long.
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