The weather in Detroit was perfect for a festival crowd this Labor Day weekend. Unfortunately,…
Tag: Dee Dee Bridgewater
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On April 6 in Indianapolis, the American Pianists Association awarded Emmet Cohen its 2019 Cole Porter Fellowship, culminating a 13-month competition that embodies the adage, “It’s a marathon, not a sprint.”
Say “G’day” to your 2019 International Jazz Day lineup. Today, the UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay and UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador Herbie Hancock announced the program for the 2019 edition of International Jazz Day, which will be launched in Australia and celebrated in more than 190 countries.
Vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater celebrated the city of Memphis, Tennessee, in her new album, Memphis…Yes,…
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A free concert honoring the 2017 NEA Jazz Masters will take place at the John…
The Palm Springs Women’s Jazz Festival will take place in Palm Springs, California on September…
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has announced the 2017 Jazz Masters Fellows, recipients…
To view the Full Digital Edition Magazine for August 2015 you must be a subscriber.…
For Dee Dee Bridgewater, there’s no place like New Orleans. By Neil Tesser It’s a…
But Dee Dee’s Feathers (OKeh/Sony Music/DDB Records), recorded in collaboration with trumpeter Irvin Mayfield and his New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, marks the first time Bridgewater has offered homage to a particular city. Throughout the album, her feathers are colorfully and fully arrayed, her protean interpretative skills on full display. (She enjoyed a secondary career as an actress in musicals during the 1970s and ’80s, winning a Tony Award in 1975 for her star turn as Glinda in the original Broadway production of The Wiz.) She offers full-bore renditions of classics — “St. James Infirmary,” Professor Longhair’s rollicking “Big Chief,” even “House of the Rising Sun” — as well as several original compositions that convey the gritty glamour of the Crescent City. On the flirty “One Fine Thing,” written by native son Harry Connick Jr., she rides herd on the big band, getting bluesy and down-low before scatting a solo that Mayfield — who solos next — needs all his tricks to match. She insinuates herself into the band’s horn textures on Hoagy Carmichael’s “New Orleans” and infiltrates the rhythm arrangements of “Congo Square” and the title track, which similarly draws its inspiration from that landmark. And while it’s tempting to deem the inclusion of “Do You Know What It Means (To Miss New Orleans)” a regrettable cliché, Bridgewater and Mayfield have simmered up a mid-tempo, neo-soul beat that retains the emotion but strips away the sentimentality.
Photo: Greg Miles