At a glance
Spirit of Lady Day
Accessible with well chosen songs and originals sewn in, Women’s Words, Sisters’ Stories evokes the spirit of Billie Holiday, Abbey Lincoln and Betty Carter paid tribute to with a lot of respect and no little skill exhibited.
Sorority of sonority
The strings soaked inclusion of Lincoln’s ‘Throw It Away’ is certainly a highlight. But you gotta wait to the end. No flipping as Larry Sanders had it.
Abbey habit
It’s a song that goes back to 1980 and the Painted Lady Abbey Lincoln in Paris album with Archie Shepp. Cassandra Wilson covered it finger clickingly 20 years ago on Glamoured with incredible bass from the Wyntonian Reginald Veal. And more recently the song and very differently rendered Sachal treatment had the singer interpreting this message song in a Nir Felder guitar soaked treatment on Shadow Train in a 2018 release. Ineza does it justice in a big highlight here and her sound lands somewhere between Lincoln and Wilson timbrally.
Other impressions? Women’s Words, Sisters’ Stories is not glossy nor fake. It’s not the creation of the geniuses in the marketing department with an eye for the main chance intent on sedating the masses with the help of a little meretricious tat.
Ineza Kerschkamp from Rwanda brought up in Belgium who studied at Trinity Laban in London is ably backed by the hep cat of the straightahead London jazz parish Alex Webb at the stool who revs up proceedings well. Formerly of the Barbican and the BBC we liked his laconically undemonstrative arranger-pianist approach a whole deal heard with Britpop era singer David McAlmont on 2019’s The Last Bohemians. Here he follows, extrapolating massively of course to make such a generalisation, the stately Hilton Ruiz approach reverting to thoughts of the delicious comping heard all over Painted Lady whose soloing therein on the Bergmans/Legrand classic ‘What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?’ is one of life’s small pleasures as are the gruff Sheppian touches.
Appealing drive from Charlie Pyne
Rosie Turton and Maddy Coombs
The pace is set by drummer Katie Patterson whose style is like Sophie Alloway, the player seen in the house band of the first series of TV drama Ridley going Hawley all over, and with whom Webb has also gigged.
Strings from the J. A. M. String Collective fill out the whole canopy of the sound and work best in the introduction to classic torch song, ‘Good Morning Heartache.’
Story telling vantage point
Webb and Ineza’s ‘The Dream Has Landed’ driven by Pyne’s springy beat successfully operates as if it were written decades ago.
Rich as the night
And that means it fits in to the sequence of material and mood of this ”rich as the night Afro blue” redolent approach.
Billie Holiday rarity ‘Who Needs You’ is here too. But thinking of Betty Carter on ‘I Can’t Help It’ it’s perhaps a bit too reserved. The horns add a lot of life to Peggy Lee’s ‘I Love Being Here With You’ where there’s a neat and persuasive solo from Turton.
All souls retro affinity
Worth your time but you don’t need me to state the bleeding obvious. Yet another very decent jazz vocals release in 2024. The spectrum in that list is very broad, however. And yet the ties that bind thinking of just the other week in Ronnie’s copping the supercool Myles Sanko intone in a Rawlsian inflection on his crowdpleaser ‘I Feel the Same’ ”You’re just like me, you bleed like I bleed/You cry just like I cry, you hurt just like I hurt”. It’s a galaxy away but still jazz and retro ruminations that are fraternal prove yin to the sisterly yang.
Ineza and the Alex Webb Trio play the Comrades Club in Epsom on 28 November. Also check out Ineza’s earlier EP Who Am I that had Olivia Dean pianist Deschanel Gordon on it.
