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https://soundprojections.blogspot.com/2016/03/dianne-reeves-b-october-23-1956.html
PHOTO: DIANNE REEVES (b. October 23, 1956)
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/dianne-reeves-mn0000211570#biography
Dianne Reeves
(October 23, 1956)
Biography by Scott Yanow
Dianne Reeves has been one of the top singers in jazz ever since the late '80s. A logical successor to Dinah Washington and Carmen McRae (although even she can't reach the impossible heights of Ella and Sarah Vaughan), Reeves is a superior interpreter of lyrics and a skilled scat singer. She was a talented vocalist with an attractive voice even as a teenager when she sang and recorded with her high school band. She was encouraged by Clark Terry, who had her perform with him while she was a college student at the University of Colorado.
There have been many times when Reeves has explored music beyond jazz. She did session work in Los Angeles starting in 1976, toured with Caldera, worked with Sergio Mendes in 1981, and toured with Harry Belafonte between 1983 and 1986. Reeves began recording as a leader in 1982 and became a regular at major jazz festivals. Her earlier recordings tended to be quite eclectic and many of her live performances have included original, African-inspired folk music (which is often autobiographical), world music, and pop.
After signing with Blue Note in 1987, however, and particularly since 1994, Reeves has found her place in jazz, recording several classic albums along the way, most notably I Remember, The Grand Encounter, The Calling: Celebrating Sarah Vaughan, and A Little Moonlight. In 2005, she appeared onscreen singing '50s standards in the George Clooney film Good Night, And Good Luck. When You Know was released in 2008. Reeves left Blue Note in 2009. After touring and an extended break, she eventually signed with Concord and began working on a new record produced by Terri Lynne Carrington. The pair enlisted an all-star cast including Esperanza Spalding, Sheila E, Robert Glasper, and George Duke (who passed away shortly after the album was completed). Beautiful Life was released just in time for Valentine's Day, 2014.
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/musicians/dianne-reeves/
Dianne Reeves
Five-time Grammy winner DIANNE REEVES is the pre-eminent jazz vocalist in the world. As a result of her breathtaking virtuosity, improvisational prowess, and unique jazz and R&B stylings, Reeves received the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Performance for three consecutive recordings – a Grammy first in any vocal category.
Reeves has won the Grammy
for Best Jazz Vocal Performance for each of her last three recordings: A
Little Moonlight in 2003, The Calling in 2001 and In The Moment- Live
in Concert in 2000. In fact, Reeves is the only recording artist in any
singing category to have accomplished such a feat three records in a
row. In 2006, Dianne Reeves went on to yet again garner the award for a
fourth record-breaking time for best jazz vocal album for her soundtrack
to the film Good Night, and Good Luck (Concord).
Featured in George Clooney’s six-time Academy Award nominated Good Night, and Good Luck, Reeves won the Best Jazz Vocal Grammy for the film's soundtrack.
Dianne Reeves
was clearly born of jazz; her singing draws upon a world of
influences-and as with Carmen McRae and Billie Holiday, Reeves is tied
to a powerful storytelling instinct. Reeves was the first vocalist
signed to the reactivated Blue Note/EMI label in 1987. As a result of
her unique R&B and jazz stylings, Reeves has since captured a huge
following and tremendous critical acclaim throughout the world.
Reeves has recorded and performed with Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. She has also recorded with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Daniel Barenboim and was a featured soloist with Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic. Reeves was the first Creative Chair for Jazz for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the first vocalist to ever perform at the famed Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Reeves
was featured with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra for several Duke
Ellington projects in celebration of Ellington's Centennial. A recording
with Daniel Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony, and a concert
appearance at Carnegie Hall with Sir Simon Rattle and the Orchestra of
St. Lukes were among her appearances associated with the Ellington
Centennial salute.
In 2002, Reeves performed at the closing
ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. She also
received the Ella Fitzgerald Award at the Montreal International Jazz
Festival, released a career-spanning compilation CD on Blue Note, The
Best of Dianne Reeves and was featured on the season finale of HBO's
“Sex & the City”.
Reeves spent much of
2003 touring throughout the world. She received an Honorary Doctorate
from the Berklee College of Music in the fall and closed out the year on
New Year's Eve performing a program of Gershwin with the Berlin
Philharmonic conducted by Simon Rattle - a performance broadcast live
throughout much of Europe and the Far East. Around the same time, Reeves
became the first internationally renowned jazz artist to perform in
Qatar. The Peninsula, Qatar's preeminent English language paper said of
Reeves, “A starburst of song exploded onto the stage along with the
rain, a musical front moved through Qatar on Thursday evening changing
the musical landscape forever.”
September 2004 marked the release
of Dianne's first holiday recording, Christmas Time is Here. Destined to
be a classic, Christmas Time is Here features unforgettable renditions
of Little Drummer Boy, Carol of the Bells, Christmas Waltz, I'll Be Home
For Christmas, Let It Snow and many, many more.
It’s a credit to
Dianne Reeves that her latest, When You Know (2008), is equal to recent
accomplishments as her 2001 tribute to Sarah Vaughan, The Calling,
2003’s A Little Moonlight, or her lush contributions to the Good Night,
and Good Luck (2005) soundtrack. When an artist consistently, unerringly
earns top marks, another “A” is as much to be expected as praised. Here
the fundamental difference is the four-time Grammy winner’s decision,
honed on the road over the past year, to record with two guitarists,
Russell Malone and Romero Lubambo, augmented by familiar names from past
albums: pianist Billy Childs, saxophonist Steve Wilson, bassists Reuben
Rogers and Reginald Veal and drummer Greg Hutchison. (Drummer Antonio
Sanchez and pianist Geoffrey Keezer are newcomers to the Reeves fold.)
Reeves worked with legendary producer Arif Mardin (Norah Jones, Aretha Franklin) on the Grammy winning A Little Moonlight, an intimate collection of standards featuring her touring trio. When Reeves’ holiday collection Christmas Time is Here was released, Ben Ratliff of The New York Times raved, “Ms. Reeves, a jazz singer of frequently astonishing skill, takes the assignment seriously; this is one of the best jazz Christmas CD's I've heard.”
In recent years Reeves has toured the world in a variety of contexts including “Sing the Truth,” a musical celebration of Nina Simone which also featured Lizz Wright and Angelique Kidjo. She performed at the White House on multiple occasions including President Obama's State Dinner for the President of China as well as the Governors’ Ball.
Reeves’ most recent release Beautiful Life, features Gregory Porter, Robert Glasper, Lalah Hathaway and Esperanza Spalding. Produced by Terri Lyne Carrington, Beautiful Life won the 2015 Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Performance. Reeves is the recipient of honorary doctorates from the Berklee College of Music and the Juilliard School. In 2018 the National Endowment for the Arts designated Reeves a Jazz Master – the highest honor the United States bestows on jazz artists.
ARTS
Eavesdropping on Dianne Reeves and Christian McBride
by Wei-Huan Chen
wei-huan.chen@indystar.com
September 10, 2015
Indystar
(Photo: Indy Jazz Fest (left); Center for the Performing Arts). Left to Right: Famed singer and renowned bassist Dianne Reeves and Christian McBride
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/17/arts/music/review-dianne-reeves-leads-journey-of-jazz-history-at-rose-hall.html?_r=0
Music
Review: Dianne Reeves Leads Journey of Jazz History at Rose Hall
by STEPHEN HOLDEN
February. 16, 2015
New York Times
Trains
of musical thought that wind from one part of the world into another
and from one century to the next: A sense of boarding and changing
trains on a far-reaching journey ran through Dianne Reeves’s concert at
Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall on Friday evening.
The most admired jazz diva since the heyday of Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, Ms. Reeves has a keen sense of herself as a custodian of a jazz vocal tradition that has fallen into disarray as the boundaries between genres have dissolved. She may be a preservationist, but her definition of jazz encompasses rhythm and blues, reggae and salsa.
On Friday she paid tribute to two luminaries in that original triumvirate: Holiday, on the occasion of her centennial, and Vaughan, to whom she has most frequently been compared, and who also had startlingly resonant notes in a baritone register. Ms. Reeves’s band — the musical director and keyboardist Peter Martin, Peter Sprague on guitar, Reginald Veal on bass and Terreon Gully on drums — shares her concept of jazz songs as territories whose borders are ripe for expansion. Almost everything she does has the aspect of a semi-improvised tone poem.
The most elaborate journey, “Tango,” was a near-wordless, shape-shifting tribute to Celia Cruz and Miriam Makeba that demonstrated Ms. Reeves’s formidable rhythmic dexterity in a piece that traveled the globe from Africa to the Caribbean to South America.
An element of restraint — or is it a sense of decorum? — prevented Ms. Reeves from overtly showing off. “Misty,” a vocal showpiece for Vaughan, had its luscious moments, but its juiciness was underplayed. The wounded essence of Holiday’s “God Bless the Child” was transmuted into a sorrowful but clearheaded awareness of an unjust world in which “the strong gets more, while the weak ones fade.”
Ms. Reeves sang the most narratively coherent rendition of Stevie Nicks’s “Dreams” I have ever heard. Even in “Stormy Weather,” a lament that tempts every singer to cry out to the heavens, Ms. Reeves kept the emotional temperature on simmer, preferring to treat this classic torch song as a sorrowful presentiment of lonely times ahead.
Dianne Reeves’s tour continues on Friday at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Miami, and on Feb. 27 at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival, University of Idaho; diannereeves.com.
A version of this review appears in print on February 17, 2015, on page C2 of the New York edition with the headline: Jazz at Its Heart, and Beyond.
The most admired jazz diva since the heyday of Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, Ms. Reeves has a keen sense of herself as a custodian of a jazz vocal tradition that has fallen into disarray as the boundaries between genres have dissolved. She may be a preservationist, but her definition of jazz encompasses rhythm and blues, reggae and salsa.
On Friday she paid tribute to two luminaries in that original triumvirate: Holiday, on the occasion of her centennial, and Vaughan, to whom she has most frequently been compared, and who also had startlingly resonant notes in a baritone register. Ms. Reeves’s band — the musical director and keyboardist Peter Martin, Peter Sprague on guitar, Reginald Veal on bass and Terreon Gully on drums — shares her concept of jazz songs as territories whose borders are ripe for expansion. Almost everything she does has the aspect of a semi-improvised tone poem.
The most elaborate journey, “Tango,” was a near-wordless, shape-shifting tribute to Celia Cruz and Miriam Makeba that demonstrated Ms. Reeves’s formidable rhythmic dexterity in a piece that traveled the globe from Africa to the Caribbean to South America.
An element of restraint — or is it a sense of decorum? — prevented Ms. Reeves from overtly showing off. “Misty,” a vocal showpiece for Vaughan, had its luscious moments, but its juiciness was underplayed. The wounded essence of Holiday’s “God Bless the Child” was transmuted into a sorrowful but clearheaded awareness of an unjust world in which “the strong gets more, while the weak ones fade.”
Ms. Reeves sang the most narratively coherent rendition of Stevie Nicks’s “Dreams” I have ever heard. Even in “Stormy Weather,” a lament that tempts every singer to cry out to the heavens, Ms. Reeves kept the emotional temperature on simmer, preferring to treat this classic torch song as a sorrowful presentiment of lonely times ahead.
Dianne Reeves’s tour continues on Friday at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Miami, and on Feb. 27 at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival, University of Idaho; diannereeves.com.
A version of this review appears in print on February 17, 2015, on page C2 of the New York edition with the headline: Jazz at Its Heart, and Beyond.
In conversation with Dianne Reeves
by Thierry Qunum
Jazz.com
On your last album, there’s only one song that you’ve written. Is there a reason why you compose less than you did before?
by Thierry Qunum
Jazz.com
On your last album, there’s only one song that you’ve written. Is there a reason why you compose less than you did before?
Well,
we’ve been touring so much that it was only during the last year that I
could take some time off to write. Since I had already had the idea for
this last record, I only included one of my tunes in it, but the rest
of the original material will be on the next.
Also, I guess I’m a singer first. I like to write songs, but I like more than anything to find songs that, whether I write them or not, really address my life. So I find myself singing the things that feel good inside of me. These songs all have stories behind them, and I can’t wait till I sing them live on stage.
The last one, Today Will be a Good Day is different as far as the sonic approach is concerned, so it’s at the end and I chose to explain why I wrote it because it’s about my mother, who’s very important for me. It was a gift to her. The other songs, like 'Just my Imagination' or 'Loving You,' make me reminisce about a place and a time in my life that was very special, and I love the fact that I can still access to them emotionally through music.
Some also reflect the journey of my graduation from imaginative love to what I’ve come to know love to be at this time of my life. And that’s something that’s abiding, uncompromising and compassionate. And it includes the love for self and all the love that you can give to change things. It’s such an amazing powerful present!
You were talking about being eager to sing these songs onstage, but a lot of listeners here in Europe have the feeling that your studio records are a bit overproduced, compared to the rawer quality of your live performances.
As I grow older I become more refined. I’ve come to understand that my voice is not just the instrument that you hear, but it’s my soul. Anytime I do a record, I’m baring my soul and I give 100% of who I am. Besides, the taste of listeners differs from country to country. As an artist, I have no control on that, and I can only be the best of who I am.
Recently I’ve been touring a lot around the world with a group that hasn’t been recorded yet : only me and two guitars (Russell Malone and Romero Lubambo). From now on, I’m going to tour either with this group or with the group that’s on my last record. So, for me the records are a jumping off point. I’m a jazz musician, so what you will hear onstage will be different from night to night. I love what happens during a recording, but I like it to be the beginning of moving the music to another place.
You were just talking about the evolution of your voice, and as a singer you definitely have a maturity that enhances your music. How do you view the actual fad for young so-called jazz singers?
Honestly, I don’t concentrate on those things. Everybody has the right to express themselves in a way that they wish to, and the success depends on the taste of the public. Sometimes they like simple melodies with uncolorful voices, and it’s not the first time in history that uneventful recordings have been successful. When there is a major machine telling people what they should listen to, then people listen. All I know is that I can do what I do, and thank God, I do it enough that it sustains my life, that I can still be passionate and that I don’t have to compromise on the things I want to say or do. So I just say live and let live.
I know that you teach singing? What do you teach to young wannabe jazz singers?
I do lots of master classes and clinics, and the thing I emphasize most of all is that your voice is not your instrument. You can convey what you have to say clearly just by talking. So if you happen to have this instrument that is a voice or a piano, how do you translate what it is that is inside of you into this instrument? And then how do you refine and define this particular instrument? I spent a long time singing the way that I do because I listened to great singers and great musicians who all said you must have your own unique sound. So I always wanted to be counted among those whom you recognize in just a few seconds. I tell my student that one of the great miracles in the world is that you are unique, so just find out this uniqueness. Whether it may garner a big audience or not, if you love it, are passionate about it, and know where you want to take it, that’s what’s important. I tell these young students to find out how they want to sing. It might even not be jazz. You are a musician before being a jazz singer. Abbey Lincoln said that jazz is a spirit. As a singer, if you want to front the band instead of being a co-creator with the musicians of the band, then you are not a jazz singer, for example.
Also, I guess I’m a singer first. I like to write songs, but I like more than anything to find songs that, whether I write them or not, really address my life. So I find myself singing the things that feel good inside of me. These songs all have stories behind them, and I can’t wait till I sing them live on stage.
The last one, Today Will be a Good Day is different as far as the sonic approach is concerned, so it’s at the end and I chose to explain why I wrote it because it’s about my mother, who’s very important for me. It was a gift to her. The other songs, like 'Just my Imagination' or 'Loving You,' make me reminisce about a place and a time in my life that was very special, and I love the fact that I can still access to them emotionally through music.
Some also reflect the journey of my graduation from imaginative love to what I’ve come to know love to be at this time of my life. And that’s something that’s abiding, uncompromising and compassionate. And it includes the love for self and all the love that you can give to change things. It’s such an amazing powerful present!
You were talking about being eager to sing these songs onstage, but a lot of listeners here in Europe have the feeling that your studio records are a bit overproduced, compared to the rawer quality of your live performances.
As I grow older I become more refined. I’ve come to understand that my voice is not just the instrument that you hear, but it’s my soul. Anytime I do a record, I’m baring my soul and I give 100% of who I am. Besides, the taste of listeners differs from country to country. As an artist, I have no control on that, and I can only be the best of who I am.
Recently I’ve been touring a lot around the world with a group that hasn’t been recorded yet : only me and two guitars (Russell Malone and Romero Lubambo). From now on, I’m going to tour either with this group or with the group that’s on my last record. So, for me the records are a jumping off point. I’m a jazz musician, so what you will hear onstage will be different from night to night. I love what happens during a recording, but I like it to be the beginning of moving the music to another place.
You were just talking about the evolution of your voice, and as a singer you definitely have a maturity that enhances your music. How do you view the actual fad for young so-called jazz singers?
Honestly, I don’t concentrate on those things. Everybody has the right to express themselves in a way that they wish to, and the success depends on the taste of the public. Sometimes they like simple melodies with uncolorful voices, and it’s not the first time in history that uneventful recordings have been successful. When there is a major machine telling people what they should listen to, then people listen. All I know is that I can do what I do, and thank God, I do it enough that it sustains my life, that I can still be passionate and that I don’t have to compromise on the things I want to say or do. So I just say live and let live.
I know that you teach singing? What do you teach to young wannabe jazz singers?
I do lots of master classes and clinics, and the thing I emphasize most of all is that your voice is not your instrument. You can convey what you have to say clearly just by talking. So if you happen to have this instrument that is a voice or a piano, how do you translate what it is that is inside of you into this instrument? And then how do you refine and define this particular instrument? I spent a long time singing the way that I do because I listened to great singers and great musicians who all said you must have your own unique sound. So I always wanted to be counted among those whom you recognize in just a few seconds. I tell my student that one of the great miracles in the world is that you are unique, so just find out this uniqueness. Whether it may garner a big audience or not, if you love it, are passionate about it, and know where you want to take it, that’s what’s important. I tell these young students to find out how they want to sing. It might even not be jazz. You are a musician before being a jazz singer. Abbey Lincoln said that jazz is a spirit. As a singer, if you want to front the band instead of being a co-creator with the musicians of the band, then you are not a jazz singer, for example.
Dianne Reeves, by Jos L. Knaepen
The banner of jazz has been thrown around a lot, and used by the industry to promote things. But if you want to start as a jazz singer because of that, how long will you last? So I don’t tell my student to try and sound like anybody else, be it Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae, Ella Fitzgerald or Dakota Staton. I tell them to listen to these great voices that have lasted, to check out how they could sing the same song differently because of what they each were, and to try to find this type of identity inside themselves so as to make a song their own. Jazz is improvisation, and this doesn’t necessarily mean scat but the ability to improvise different variations, to phrase differently on the same theme, night after night, in interaction with the rest of the band. Just like anything else, it is a discipline.
Let’s talk about the George Clooney movie Good Night and Good Luck now, if you don't mind. How about the sudden exposure it gave you?
I think it’s great and it has served me well. First, the film is very intelligent and I think it really speaks to the world about our civil liberties. I love the way George Clooney integrated the music, making it the soothsayer or the Greek chorus of the film, because the songs he selected take on a totally different personality, which is amazing because there are love songs that turn into songs about the FBI or what have you. I also loved the fact that I had to sing these songs from the period when the story takes place with respect of the time, in a 'clean' way, and with no extra type of concepts that we have about this music nowadays. I also loved the fact that George Clooney allowed me to sing live, like they did in the studios at that time. When I received the script I thought: ‘That's interesting: you’re doing a soundtrack and they send you the script. But then I realized that I really had to play a part, and George Clooney explained to me what he expected of me, and I found it amazing.
Part of this role that you and the music play in this film seems to be an emotional counterpoint to what happens in the plot, for example, when the main character comes to see you sing 'How High the Moon' after one of his friends has committed suicide because of the McCarthy campaign against him.
The plot and the dialogues are so heavy in this film that the music had to bring some kind of relief. In the scene you talk about, Clooney wanted a very slow version of the song, and while they shot the scene, I was really in front of the actor who impersonated Edward R. Murrow, behind the studio glass so I could really see his face and reflect the sadness of what he expressed. This was like my shining moment. When I went to the premiere in New York, I was sitting next to Mr Clooney and I hadn’t seen the film. When it came to this scene, he grabbed my arm and said 'Here it comes.' And it made me cry because I had never seen myself on a big screen.
Did you know George Clooney before?
No, but when I asked him why he had selected me he said that his aunt Rosemary Clooney was a big fan of mine and had told him a lot about me.
Aren’t you afraid that this film may give your new fans a distorted image of you, and that they may expect the same vintage routine onstage and on record?
Not at all. On the contrary I think they are curious about what else I can do than what they saw in the film. Some didn’t know me before, so they have gone back in my catalog, trying to discover what I did before. I guess my audience is more mature than you may think it is, and it accepts that an artist is multifaceted. As far as this is concerned, today is a good time for me.
http://jazztimes.com/articles/18113-dianne-reeves-grand-passion
Dianne Reeves sounds relaxed and happy. A few months of vegging
out at home can do wonders for anyone’s state of mind, even a dedicated
road warrior such as Reeves. “I’m savoring my last weeks here in Denver
before going out on tour to support the new album,” she says by phone
from her Colorado home.
Despite her calm manner, however, and despite the busy sounds of family life in the background, there’s an undertone of excitement in Reeves’ voice. And it doesn’t take long to determine the cause, as our conversation quickly makes a beeline to the new album she refers to: When You Know (Blue Note), her first since the 2005 soundtrack from the film Good Night, and Good Luck. “But the last album that I really, really did before this,” she adds, “was A Little Moonlight with Arif Mardin.”
That particular recording garnered a Grammy award for Reeves in 2003 in the Best Jazz Vocal Album category, her third consecutive album to win that award, making her the first singer to do so in any vocal category. The film soundtrack also won a Grammy, in 2005, but Reeves is clearly happy to have been back in the studio for the new album with her longtime producer—and cousin—pianist George Duke. “I have been working with George since my first Blue Note album,” she says. “I think since then he’s produced every album I’ve done except maybe three. And I love working with him, because he’s not going to try to inflict his sound or his choices on you. It’s really about your voice, which makes it really, really easy to work with him.”
The “really, really” emphases, along with occasional interjections of emotional “Ohs” in the middle of phrases, are intrinsic elements in a conversation with Reeves, who, despite her seemingly cool demeanor, feels deeply about many things, especially the music of her chosen profession. And it quickly becomes apparent in our conversation that her return to the studio to record When You Know with Duke in the control room has been significant on several levels.
First, of course, there was the fundamental need to work on a project that, unlike the soundtrack CD, was hers from start to finish.
Second, there was her awareness of the importance of needing new product to support her frequent touring. “I love touring more than anything,” she says. “I’ve always benefited from being able to tour. And recording is an opportunity for me to do more touring.”
And, third, the new album was an opportunity to get back to the deep comfort level of working with Duke. “George has really helped me to trust my instincts from the very beginning,” says Reeves. “When I used to record, I was like, ‘Oh, I gotta fix that note, gotta fix that note.’ But he would be, ‘No, that was really soulful the way you did that.’ And I was like, ‘No, I gotta fix it, I gotta fix it.’ But now I can hear things in a different way.”
She also mentions the importance, as well as the risks, of feeling vulnerability in the studio. “I really need it,” she continues. “It’s the only way I can dig deeply into a song. And knowing that I have this kind of protective umbrella from George Duke, it’s easy to go inside and find what I’m looking for. There were times in the studio when he would say, ‘You’re tired. You have to stop singing.’ But the joy was still there; I still felt safe. I went ahead anyhow, and a lot of the vocals that we did in those sessions were vocals that we kept.”
The initial stimulus for the album, the trigger experience that began to conceptualize When You Know for Reeves, actually took place long before she initially discussed the project with Duke—and many miles away. “I actually had about 20 tunes that I wanted to do,” she says. “Some of them I had already been doing with my group. I was putting them all together, kind of coming up with the thought, OK, what is it about these songs that you want to do? And I finally began to realize that it had something to do with an evolution in love and maturity.”
As she was pondering the possibilities, Reeves, on tour in Europe, visited the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, and finally found her answer. “I wanted to see the Gustav Klimt exhibit,” she explains, “and I especially wanted to see his painting, ‘The Kiss,’ because I’d always heard so much about it. But instead I ended up being transfixed by a picture of this woman he always painted. It started out with her as a child and went all the way up—and it was never finished—until she’s a mature woman, with all the different phases. But I began thinking, Wow, this connects with my selection of songs, so I went back to the songs and just went to the ones that made me feel the most in terms of that painting. And that’s how the program all came together.”
That settled, she called Duke.
“It was our usual thing,” says Reeves. “I said, ‘OK, George, this is what I want to do. I want to use these musicians and I want them to do this and that, and I want this kind of arrangements,’ and he just took it all in and then said, ‘OK,’ the way he always does. And then he put it all together. The way he always does.”
Looking at the roster of talent on the album can only make one marvel at Reeves’ matter-of-fact tone. Among those present: guitarists Russell Malone and Romero Lubambo, playing together; pianists Billy Childs and Geoffrey Keezer; saxophonist Steve Wilson; and a few veterans from Reeves’ bands, bassists Reuben Rogers and Reginald Veal and drummer Greg Hutchinson.
The seemingly unusual combination of Malone and Lubambo actually traces to a 2004 gig in Germany in which a local concert producer matched Reeves with the two guitarists for a show. “I had worked with Romero and Russell before, but not together,” says Reeves. “But this guy came up with this idea, and it worked really nice. But it wasn’t until 2006 that they actually booked us on a tour called ‘Strings Attached,’ with the three of us. We did five cities. It was an incredible experience, because I have a relationship with both of them and there we were together, one really steeped in Brazilian culture and the other one coming out of the church in Albany, Ga. But we’re all meeting in this place called ‘jazz.’ We’ve only done it a couple of times in the States—[at] the Metropolitan museum, for one. But it’s just really, really great. Working with them helps me to find all sorts of different places in my voice. That’s why they’re on everything on this record.” She adds, with a happy chuckle, that a live recording of the unusual trio awaits release at a later date.
Reeves expresses similar excitement about Childs’ presence on When You Know. Despite his busy schedule, the pianist/composer/arranger continues to have a low visibility not at all commensurate with the quality or the importance of his work. (One wonders whether his decision to live in Los Angeles, on the Left Coast of the jazz world, has anything to do with it.)
As we talk our way through the tunes on the new album, Reeves underscores the importance of Childs’ creative contributions. “The thing I love about Billy,” she says, “is that when he does an arrangement, we’ll sit down and talk about the lyrics as much as the music. Like in the arrangement he did for ‘Windmills of Your Mind.’ The lyric has all these ideas, one after another, and it’s constantly moving. But I wanted to be able to express them differently from the way they’re usually done. So Billy changed the rhythm, making it so that I have more time to put the focus on certain words. And we could do it that way because Billy is so open to a broader view. And, of course, because we’ve been working together forever.”
Other tunes on the album, from the opening “Just My Imagination” to the final “Today Will Be a Good Day,” unfold, in subtle fashion, as the “evolution in love and maturity” Reeves saw in the Klimt painting.
“Just My Imagination” is, of course, the song that became a platinum single for Eddie Kendricks and the Temptations in 1971. “The Temptations are my favorite group,” says Reeves, “and I’ve been doing this song for a long time, but I’ve never recorded it. I mentioned it to Billy and he said, ‘Oh, I really dig that song. Let me do the arrangement,’ and I said “Ooookay.’ And, just like ‘Windmills,’ the way he arranged it is very complex. But he still kept the sweetness and simplicity.”
When I express my utter mystification regarding the song “Over the Weekend,” Reeves just laughs. “Believe me, you’re not the only one,” she says. “The only person that I know of, besides Nancy Wilson, who ever did it was Mabel Mercer. The way I found out was Nancy told me about it, and then George Wein said, ‘Oh, I love that song. I used to always go and hear Mabel Mercer sing it.’ And Nancy said, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s where I got it from, too.”
“Loving You” will generate poignant echoes for anyone who remembers the extraordinary voice of the late Minnie Riperton. A hit for her in the early ’70s, it remains a pop-music classic, so defined by her version that Reeves initially hesitated to do the song. “Russell Malone, who knows every song ever written,” recalls Reeves, “said, ‘Let’s do “Loving You,”’ and I said, ‘You got to be kidding. I love that song.’ But sometimes for me there are certain songs I won’t sing because I can’t get a certain version out of my head, and I don’t want to sing it like they did it.”
Despite her calm manner, however, and despite the busy sounds of family life in the background, there’s an undertone of excitement in Reeves’ voice. And it doesn’t take long to determine the cause, as our conversation quickly makes a beeline to the new album she refers to: When You Know (Blue Note), her first since the 2005 soundtrack from the film Good Night, and Good Luck. “But the last album that I really, really did before this,” she adds, “was A Little Moonlight with Arif Mardin.”
That particular recording garnered a Grammy award for Reeves in 2003 in the Best Jazz Vocal Album category, her third consecutive album to win that award, making her the first singer to do so in any vocal category. The film soundtrack also won a Grammy, in 2005, but Reeves is clearly happy to have been back in the studio for the new album with her longtime producer—and cousin—pianist George Duke. “I have been working with George since my first Blue Note album,” she says. “I think since then he’s produced every album I’ve done except maybe three. And I love working with him, because he’s not going to try to inflict his sound or his choices on you. It’s really about your voice, which makes it really, really easy to work with him.”
The “really, really” emphases, along with occasional interjections of emotional “Ohs” in the middle of phrases, are intrinsic elements in a conversation with Reeves, who, despite her seemingly cool demeanor, feels deeply about many things, especially the music of her chosen profession. And it quickly becomes apparent in our conversation that her return to the studio to record When You Know with Duke in the control room has been significant on several levels.
First, of course, there was the fundamental need to work on a project that, unlike the soundtrack CD, was hers from start to finish.
Second, there was her awareness of the importance of needing new product to support her frequent touring. “I love touring more than anything,” she says. “I’ve always benefited from being able to tour. And recording is an opportunity for me to do more touring.”
And, third, the new album was an opportunity to get back to the deep comfort level of working with Duke. “George has really helped me to trust my instincts from the very beginning,” says Reeves. “When I used to record, I was like, ‘Oh, I gotta fix that note, gotta fix that note.’ But he would be, ‘No, that was really soulful the way you did that.’ And I was like, ‘No, I gotta fix it, I gotta fix it.’ But now I can hear things in a different way.”
She also mentions the importance, as well as the risks, of feeling vulnerability in the studio. “I really need it,” she continues. “It’s the only way I can dig deeply into a song. And knowing that I have this kind of protective umbrella from George Duke, it’s easy to go inside and find what I’m looking for. There were times in the studio when he would say, ‘You’re tired. You have to stop singing.’ But the joy was still there; I still felt safe. I went ahead anyhow, and a lot of the vocals that we did in those sessions were vocals that we kept.”
The initial stimulus for the album, the trigger experience that began to conceptualize When You Know for Reeves, actually took place long before she initially discussed the project with Duke—and many miles away. “I actually had about 20 tunes that I wanted to do,” she says. “Some of them I had already been doing with my group. I was putting them all together, kind of coming up with the thought, OK, what is it about these songs that you want to do? And I finally began to realize that it had something to do with an evolution in love and maturity.”
As she was pondering the possibilities, Reeves, on tour in Europe, visited the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, and finally found her answer. “I wanted to see the Gustav Klimt exhibit,” she explains, “and I especially wanted to see his painting, ‘The Kiss,’ because I’d always heard so much about it. But instead I ended up being transfixed by a picture of this woman he always painted. It started out with her as a child and went all the way up—and it was never finished—until she’s a mature woman, with all the different phases. But I began thinking, Wow, this connects with my selection of songs, so I went back to the songs and just went to the ones that made me feel the most in terms of that painting. And that’s how the program all came together.”
That settled, she called Duke.
“It was our usual thing,” says Reeves. “I said, ‘OK, George, this is what I want to do. I want to use these musicians and I want them to do this and that, and I want this kind of arrangements,’ and he just took it all in and then said, ‘OK,’ the way he always does. And then he put it all together. The way he always does.”
Looking at the roster of talent on the album can only make one marvel at Reeves’ matter-of-fact tone. Among those present: guitarists Russell Malone and Romero Lubambo, playing together; pianists Billy Childs and Geoffrey Keezer; saxophonist Steve Wilson; and a few veterans from Reeves’ bands, bassists Reuben Rogers and Reginald Veal and drummer Greg Hutchinson.
The seemingly unusual combination of Malone and Lubambo actually traces to a 2004 gig in Germany in which a local concert producer matched Reeves with the two guitarists for a show. “I had worked with Romero and Russell before, but not together,” says Reeves. “But this guy came up with this idea, and it worked really nice. But it wasn’t until 2006 that they actually booked us on a tour called ‘Strings Attached,’ with the three of us. We did five cities. It was an incredible experience, because I have a relationship with both of them and there we were together, one really steeped in Brazilian culture and the other one coming out of the church in Albany, Ga. But we’re all meeting in this place called ‘jazz.’ We’ve only done it a couple of times in the States—[at] the Metropolitan museum, for one. But it’s just really, really great. Working with them helps me to find all sorts of different places in my voice. That’s why they’re on everything on this record.” She adds, with a happy chuckle, that a live recording of the unusual trio awaits release at a later date.
Reeves expresses similar excitement about Childs’ presence on When You Know. Despite his busy schedule, the pianist/composer/arranger continues to have a low visibility not at all commensurate with the quality or the importance of his work. (One wonders whether his decision to live in Los Angeles, on the Left Coast of the jazz world, has anything to do with it.)
As we talk our way through the tunes on the new album, Reeves underscores the importance of Childs’ creative contributions. “The thing I love about Billy,” she says, “is that when he does an arrangement, we’ll sit down and talk about the lyrics as much as the music. Like in the arrangement he did for ‘Windmills of Your Mind.’ The lyric has all these ideas, one after another, and it’s constantly moving. But I wanted to be able to express them differently from the way they’re usually done. So Billy changed the rhythm, making it so that I have more time to put the focus on certain words. And we could do it that way because Billy is so open to a broader view. And, of course, because we’ve been working together forever.”
Other tunes on the album, from the opening “Just My Imagination” to the final “Today Will Be a Good Day,” unfold, in subtle fashion, as the “evolution in love and maturity” Reeves saw in the Klimt painting.
“Just My Imagination” is, of course, the song that became a platinum single for Eddie Kendricks and the Temptations in 1971. “The Temptations are my favorite group,” says Reeves, “and I’ve been doing this song for a long time, but I’ve never recorded it. I mentioned it to Billy and he said, ‘Oh, I really dig that song. Let me do the arrangement,’ and I said “Ooookay.’ And, just like ‘Windmills,’ the way he arranged it is very complex. But he still kept the sweetness and simplicity.”
When I express my utter mystification regarding the song “Over the Weekend,” Reeves just laughs. “Believe me, you’re not the only one,” she says. “The only person that I know of, besides Nancy Wilson, who ever did it was Mabel Mercer. The way I found out was Nancy told me about it, and then George Wein said, ‘Oh, I love that song. I used to always go and hear Mabel Mercer sing it.’ And Nancy said, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s where I got it from, too.”
“Loving You” will generate poignant echoes for anyone who remembers the extraordinary voice of the late Minnie Riperton. A hit for her in the early ’70s, it remains a pop-music classic, so defined by her version that Reeves initially hesitated to do the song. “Russell Malone, who knows every song ever written,” recalls Reeves, “said, ‘Let’s do “Loving You,”’ and I said, ‘You got to be kidding. I love that song.’ But sometimes for me there are certain songs I won’t sing because I can’t get a certain version out of my head, and I don’t want to sing it like they did it.”
As with her performance of “Midnight Sun,” however—a tune closely
associated with Sarah Vaughan—Reeves took a more practical perspective.
“There’s a lot of music out there in the pop world today that is void of
melody,” she says. “And while a lot of the lyrics are cool, when I
think of lyricists I think of people like the Bergmans, who really have
ideas and then craft them and make them really wonderful.”
So, she felt, why not keep great songs alive, especially if they can be done from a different creative viewpoint?
“I thought, I’ll do these songs because I love them,” she adds. “And if they turn out to be songs—like ‘Loving You’ and ‘Midnight Sun’—that have a really high bar in terms of difficulty of performance, maybe it’ll inspire some young singers to go back and take more good songs like these and give them a new life.”
But when I mention her inclusion of Riperton’s final high-note phrase at the conclusion of “Loving You,” Reeves admits, with a slight giggle, “Minnie actually sang that song three keys above where I did it.”
Lubambo’s presence, as today’s resident bossa-nova master, was vital to the performance of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Once I Loved.” But his rhythmic inflections are almost a subtext, as the song surfaces with distinct jazz-ballad qualities. “I love Ray Gilbert’s lyrics,” says Reeves. “I was introduced to singing that song when we did the Jobim tribute at the Hollywood Bowl, where I got to sing it with Romero and Oscar Castro-Neves. What kind of thrill was that!? And I wanted to get the same kind of intimacy, the same subtlety.”
When I ask why—with all the albums she’s made, and with her affection for and adeptness with Brazilian music—she’s never made an all-Brazilian album, Reeves hesitates for a moment before answering. “Well,” she finally says, “I have enough stuff to do a compilation of Brazilian material from individual songs I’ve already recorded. But I don’t want to just do a compilation. Romero and I have been talking about doing a new set of tunes, primarily because this record really caused me to be inspired. So we’ve been writing songs; a lot of them have that bossa-nova feeling, and we’ll see where it leads.”
Although “I’m in Love Again” was written by Cy Coleman and Peggy Lee, Reeves first heard it from Blossom Dearie. “I love the first line,” she says. “‘I’m in love again, and the feeling’s not new.’ I love it! And just listen to what Russell and Romero do with it.”
And “Social Call” provides Reeves with a vehicle for her always impressive scat and vocalese chops. The first time I heard her in action, years ago, Reeves introduced the members of her band via spontaneously invented, vocalese phrases—beautifully articulated, briskly swinging and personally insightful. The same qualities are present here. “I once did a tribute to Jon Hendricks at Lincoln Center,” she explains, “and I said, ‘I have something I want to sing for you.’ Then, keeping with his tradition, I did the vocalese I’d written for him.”
The album’s final two tracks—the title song, followed by her original tune, “Today Will Be a Good Day”—flow one into the other as manifestations of the sense of love and emotional evolution that Reeves wanted to portray in the program.
“When You Know,” she says, “actually comes from a film called Serendipity. I always liked the idea of the film, that there really, really are no accidents, there are just things that are for you. That made sense to me, because growing up in church you used to always hear people way, ‘Well, when you know that you know that you know that you know.’ And the song says that, and I like it.”
Equally important, the arrangement by Childs includes what Reeves describes as a “really interesting bassline … Every time I heard it, it reminded me of Weather Report. And then Joe Zawinul passed away—we decided to put the children’s voices on the end of the song, and Joe always had that kind of thing on his records. So it’s kind of a tribute to him, because he was always very, very good to me. I loved his music, and I loved the peacefulness. Like Billy’s arrangements, it could be very complex, but it always came from a place of innocence.”
Reeves’ own “Today Will Be a Good Day” concludes with an expression of “the ultimate form of love.
“It’s a love you don’t have to question,” she says. “You just know it is there. And it’s truly a love I’ve known. My mother is 83 years young, and she’s amazing—independent, driving around to see the sick and the shut-in. She has a few of her own health issues, but she’s all about living and forward-thinking. Since I’ve been home during this period, after living so many years in Los Angeles and New York, I’ve learned a lot of things from her, and it’s been very good to be here.”
The genesis of the song took place as she was sitting with her mother, having one of their conversations, and a theme began to coalesce in Reeves’ imagination. She knew she was going to have to write it for her mother. “It fit beautifully on the record, exactly what I wanted for the final number,” she adds. “When some people hear it, they say, ‘This sounds like a blues,’ but it really comes from the kind of church that my mother went to, a holiness church, a Pentecostal church. Russell understands that music; just listen to what he plays. And Reginald Veal used to play in one of those churches, so he’s playing the bass, and he also plays washboard and foot—just stomping it. My mother loves all those things, so I was able to write this song just for her.”
“Today Will Be a Good Day” also adds another emotional prism to Reeves’ album, one that brings a sense of optimism and everyday reality to her desire to explore the “evolution of love and maturity.”
It’s all contained in a phrase Reeves attributes to her mother, but is equally reflective of her own, down-to-earth life view: “I don’t entertain illness, boredom or depression. It doesn’t mean that I don’t get them. I just do not entertain them.”
So, she felt, why not keep great songs alive, especially if they can be done from a different creative viewpoint?
“I thought, I’ll do these songs because I love them,” she adds. “And if they turn out to be songs—like ‘Loving You’ and ‘Midnight Sun’—that have a really high bar in terms of difficulty of performance, maybe it’ll inspire some young singers to go back and take more good songs like these and give them a new life.”
But when I mention her inclusion of Riperton’s final high-note phrase at the conclusion of “Loving You,” Reeves admits, with a slight giggle, “Minnie actually sang that song three keys above where I did it.”
Lubambo’s presence, as today’s resident bossa-nova master, was vital to the performance of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Once I Loved.” But his rhythmic inflections are almost a subtext, as the song surfaces with distinct jazz-ballad qualities. “I love Ray Gilbert’s lyrics,” says Reeves. “I was introduced to singing that song when we did the Jobim tribute at the Hollywood Bowl, where I got to sing it with Romero and Oscar Castro-Neves. What kind of thrill was that!? And I wanted to get the same kind of intimacy, the same subtlety.”
When I ask why—with all the albums she’s made, and with her affection for and adeptness with Brazilian music—she’s never made an all-Brazilian album, Reeves hesitates for a moment before answering. “Well,” she finally says, “I have enough stuff to do a compilation of Brazilian material from individual songs I’ve already recorded. But I don’t want to just do a compilation. Romero and I have been talking about doing a new set of tunes, primarily because this record really caused me to be inspired. So we’ve been writing songs; a lot of them have that bossa-nova feeling, and we’ll see where it leads.”
Although “I’m in Love Again” was written by Cy Coleman and Peggy Lee, Reeves first heard it from Blossom Dearie. “I love the first line,” she says. “‘I’m in love again, and the feeling’s not new.’ I love it! And just listen to what Russell and Romero do with it.”
And “Social Call” provides Reeves with a vehicle for her always impressive scat and vocalese chops. The first time I heard her in action, years ago, Reeves introduced the members of her band via spontaneously invented, vocalese phrases—beautifully articulated, briskly swinging and personally insightful. The same qualities are present here. “I once did a tribute to Jon Hendricks at Lincoln Center,” she explains, “and I said, ‘I have something I want to sing for you.’ Then, keeping with his tradition, I did the vocalese I’d written for him.”
The album’s final two tracks—the title song, followed by her original tune, “Today Will Be a Good Day”—flow one into the other as manifestations of the sense of love and emotional evolution that Reeves wanted to portray in the program.
“When You Know,” she says, “actually comes from a film called Serendipity. I always liked the idea of the film, that there really, really are no accidents, there are just things that are for you. That made sense to me, because growing up in church you used to always hear people way, ‘Well, when you know that you know that you know that you know.’ And the song says that, and I like it.”
Equally important, the arrangement by Childs includes what Reeves describes as a “really interesting bassline … Every time I heard it, it reminded me of Weather Report. And then Joe Zawinul passed away—we decided to put the children’s voices on the end of the song, and Joe always had that kind of thing on his records. So it’s kind of a tribute to him, because he was always very, very good to me. I loved his music, and I loved the peacefulness. Like Billy’s arrangements, it could be very complex, but it always came from a place of innocence.”
Reeves’ own “Today Will Be a Good Day” concludes with an expression of “the ultimate form of love.
“It’s a love you don’t have to question,” she says. “You just know it is there. And it’s truly a love I’ve known. My mother is 83 years young, and she’s amazing—independent, driving around to see the sick and the shut-in. She has a few of her own health issues, but she’s all about living and forward-thinking. Since I’ve been home during this period, after living so many years in Los Angeles and New York, I’ve learned a lot of things from her, and it’s been very good to be here.”
The genesis of the song took place as she was sitting with her mother, having one of their conversations, and a theme began to coalesce in Reeves’ imagination. She knew she was going to have to write it for her mother. “It fit beautifully on the record, exactly what I wanted for the final number,” she adds. “When some people hear it, they say, ‘This sounds like a blues,’ but it really comes from the kind of church that my mother went to, a holiness church, a Pentecostal church. Russell understands that music; just listen to what he plays. And Reginald Veal used to play in one of those churches, so he’s playing the bass, and he also plays washboard and foot—just stomping it. My mother loves all those things, so I was able to write this song just for her.”
“Today Will Be a Good Day” also adds another emotional prism to Reeves’ album, one that brings a sense of optimism and everyday reality to her desire to explore the “evolution of love and maturity.”
It’s all contained in a phrase Reeves attributes to her mother, but is equally reflective of her own, down-to-earth life view: “I don’t entertain illness, boredom or depression. It doesn’t mean that I don’t get them. I just do not entertain them.”
http://www.nuvo.net/indianapolis/dianne-reeves-talks-powerful-women/Content?oid=3470689
September 09, 2015 Music » Local Music Profiles
Dianne Reeves talks powerful women
by Katherine Coplen
NUVO.com
Dianne Reeves
Submitted Photo
Submitted Photo
Lucky for local soul jazz lovers, Dianne Reeves is back just a few short months after her last stop in Indy for the American Pianists Association Jazz Fellowship Finals at the Hilbert Circle Theater. And she'll perform just a mile or so from Hilbert on Tuesday, at the Walker Theater as part of Indy Jazz Fest. The five-time Grammy Award winner brings with her a gorgeous new album, 2013's Beautiful Life (for which she won a Grammy this year), an eclectic collection of pop standards (Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams," Bob Marley's "Waiting in Vain," Ani DiFranco's "32 Flavors") and soul classics (Marvin Gaye's "I Want You") plus original compositions penned by Reeves and her band, and collaborators like Esperanza Spalding.
I spoke with Reeves in late August about her new album and many accolades, plus the woman who provided an example of a true beautiful life: her mother.
On working with Esperanza Spalding on Beautiful Life track "Wild Rose":
"Beginning with Esperanza, we had kind of talked about this a year before. I told her to be a part of the record, and she said, 'Oh, absolutely.' She's got a very sweet and uplifting spirit. So I saw her at the Mercy Jazz Festival, and we were talking about it. And I said, 'Would you be interested in writing a song for me?' And she said yes, and we discussed what it would be about. I told her where I am in my life, how I feel and what I've done. ... We started the record in the Christmas of 2013 and she gave me the song then. When I heard it, I couldn't believe it. It has this really beautiful rhythmic sense and harmonic sense, and I love the fact that it's a story. It's a story of empowerment and being your authentic self. She gave it to me, we rehearsed it, and it was really, really nice because she has a whole different way of looking at the music. Her universe is very broad and getting even more so. I really enjoyed it."
Dianne Reeves
Submitted Photo
Submitted Photo
"It was in my live repertoire because to me, she's a poet more than anything. The thing that I love about the music that I do, I have the musicians come up with a groove, or I'd just improvise, and I could always just improvise and use these words [the lyrics to '32 Flavors']. I love the strength of the words – well, the strength of her music any way. I decided that I know I've been doing it [live], but I want to include it because not everybody has heard it. So we did it.
On Beautiful Life's "Long Road Ahead," a song written for her mother:
"My mother was a pretty extraordinary person, as I guess we believe all our mothers are. She really touched a lot of lives. She had her faults like everybody, but she was able to take those faults as things that she learned about herself and change them and use them to help other people. She was a nurse, and she worked in the community. She worked with generations of people. She would work with one girl's child, and that child would bring her child, and that child would bring theirs. It was like that. It was really a pillar in the community. For me, even now, we just lost her like almost four years ago, you hold onto everything that you ever learned. Everything that you ever saw the shining example. For me, my mother really held the sky up for me in a lot of ways. She was a wise person. This song, a mother lives in her children, and in children in general. She always saw light, and she always saw the best in them. This song was really my journey with her, and some of the things that she would say, and her spirit."
On her many awards, including a new honorary doctorate from Julliard:
"It's pretty extraordinary. This is the second one; the first one was from the Berklee School of Music. There are all of these amazingly brilliant lights of students that are at this graduation. More than anything it's an opportunity to let them know to be unique and be yourself, and do your thing to the fullest. Enjoy what it is that you do. I know that you'll hear from a lot of them in different kinds of ways. You could feel the passion in the room. To be celebrated with some of the other people who received the honorary doctorate, and hearing their lives, it just made me feel so grateful for having art in my school. It made me grateful for being able to take something that I'm most passionate about, and it saved my life.
http://jazztimes.com/articles/19724-dianne-reeves-amazing-grace
Dianne Reeves: Amazing Grace
October 2003
Applying Darwinian principles to jazz singing, Dianne Reeves
represents the survival of the fittest. Unravel her musical DNA and
you’d discover the dexterity of her hero Sarah Vaughan, the disciplined
integrity of Carmen McRae and the effusive warmth of Ella Fitzgerald.
You’d detect traces of such disparate mentors and teachers as Clark
Terry, Billy Childs, Sergio Mendes and Harry Belafonte. You’d find
familial echoes of her bassist uncle Charles Barrell and her cousin
George Duke. In a career that spans three decades, the 46-year-old
Grammy winner has combined all such influences to create a
jazz-world-pop-bop synthesis that is the bellwether for such
genre-hopping acolytes as Norah Jones, Jane Monheit and Lizz Wright.
As with Bobby McFerrin (one of the few artists who rivals her multiplicity), critics continue to be stumped by Reeves’ professional legerdemain, often damning her for the very assets that make her unique. Chatting over breakfast during an early summer concert stop in Buffalo, N.Y., Reeves recalls a particularly painful moment of journalistic mean-spiritedness. “It was several years ago in Arizona. A reviewer called me up and I was very honest with him, musically speaking, about a lot of different things. His story appeared the next day and the headline was ‘Raking Reeves.’ At the end of it he said that as long as people continue to listen to people like Dianne Reeves, Al Jarreau, Bobby McFerrin and Manhattan Transfer jazz will be on the decline. I never had an article hurt me so badly because I knew that my jazz foundation enabled me to absorb a world of music. I knew that one of my talents was my versatility and I loved that in my life. Because of that versatility I’ve had the opportunity to share music with all sorts of different people on all sorts of different levels.”
For years afterward, Reeves avoided her own press. “Good or bad,” she says, “I just would not read it; I just didn’t want to know.” She’s since grown philosophic about the slings, arrows and bouquets tossed her way. “Some of the comments were pretty hard—really hard—but I just had to get through it. Now my attitude is, ‘This is what I’m doing: take it or leave it’.”
Projecting a Zenlike complacency similar to that of her friend and sometime collaborator Roy Hargrove (“He doesn’t think music,” she enthuses. “He is music”), Reeves seems enviably contented. Though healthily pragmatic and perhaps overly self-effacing, she is—on stage, on disc and in person—simply who she is. No pretense, no ego, no grandiosity, no games. Professionally speaking, things have never been rosier. Her 16-year, 11-album relationship with Blue Note is one of trust and mutual respect. It is, she says, “a place where they really love the music and love the artists. I can call up [Blue Note president] Bruce Lundvall and we don’t even have to discuss music. We can talk about a million other things, which is really nice. The biggest thing, though, that makes artists want to be there is the freedom to have yourself documented as you change and grow. I can be myself without ever having to compromise my music.”
Her latest release, the misty, all-acoustic, all-standards collection A Little Moonlight, was motivated by “my love for my band”—pianist-arranger Peter Martin, bass player Reuben Rogers and drummer Gregory Hutchinson. “We came together about a year and a half ago. All three of them worked with Betty Carter and really learned to both accompany and inspire. I don’t ever look at them as a backup band. We’re all equal contributors to the whole sound. I really wanted to capture the love, the intimacy we share. And their energy is so great. I’ve been so blown away by them, so inspired in my soul, that it caused me to go to the gym and lose 50 pounds just so I could keep up.”
A gorgeously romantic compilation, Moonlight was produced by legendary diva architect Arif Mardin, who aptly describes the experience as “truly a magical adventure. We really had a fabulous time, and I think the album, so intimate and heartfelt, is one of her best. I’m known to add a lot of stuff to my productions—horns and strings and such—but the power on this album comes from a three-person rhythm section playing so well and at such an energy level that they sound like a big orchestra. And, of course, there’s her singing! Even her scatting, which sounds like a tenor sax, has so much meaning. Unlike a lot of other jazz singers, there’s no throwaway. Every note she sings has relevance. I can tell you I think she’s going to get another Grammy for her performance.”
Reeves’ continent-jumping touring itinerary remains jampacked through 2004. Despite the breakneck schedule, she’s signed on as the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association’s Creative Chair for Jazz and is calling on such esteemed colleagues as Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett and Wynton Marsalis to shape a series of performances at the Walt Disney Concert Hall that she promises will be “a little bit of heaven for the jazz enthusiast.” And just to add a layer of icing to an already sweet year, this past June she and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler (surely one of the most intriguingly odd musical couples imaginable) were recipients of honorary Berklee doctorates.
Though refreshingly taciturn about personal matters (no fan of kiss ’n’ tell publicity, her private life, centered around relatives and friends in her adopted home town of Denver, is private), Reeves is happy—indeed eager—to share family history in song. Longtime fans recognize the sepia-tinted “Better Days” as a pillar of her early career. Though also known as “The Grandma Song,” it pays broader homage to all the matriarchal figures—grandmother, mother, elder sister, aunts and great aunts—who, after the death of Reeves’ father in 1958, defined her childhood and adolescence. “Even though,” she remembers, “my mother remarried and my stepfather was wonderful, the family was entirely run by women. All of them had a significant influence on shaping my perspective because they were very strong and fiercely independent. When tragedy would strike, they’d deal with it and move on. They gave me my independence and my security, and taught me to move forward no matter what.”
Reeves picks up the autobiographical thread in “The First Five Chapters” (included on her live, Grammy-winning In the Moment from 2000), a rich slice of self-analysis adapted from the Portia Nelson poem “Autobiography in Five Chapters.” In the prelude, a determined 18-year-old Reeves decides to set off on her own in pursuit of a singing career and debates the relative merits of New York and L.A.:
I could starve and be cold in the East/Or starve and be hot on the West Coast.
Los Angeles won. “The biggest reason,” she says, “was that my cousin, George Duke, was there. Also, back then the music that really rang for me was the early fusion music. I remember dancing to Bitches Brew when nobody was home. I’d have it up loud and just let my imagination run wild. It seemed like most of the fusion musicians were in L.A., and I wanted to go out there and see it and be in it.”
Arriving in California, she joined the Latin fusion group Caldera and then linked up with pianist Billy Childs. “Billy heard me sing with Caldera and wanted me to record his ‘Lullaby’ but,” she recalls with a giggle, “didn’t think he could afford me because he thought I was really big time! At the same time, a friend of mine said, ‘There’s this piano player I really think you oughta know’ and gave me Billy’s number. Six months went by. Finally I called him and said, ‘Hi, this is Dianne Reeves, and I’m calling to see if I can get piano lessons from you.’ The lessons never happened. Instead, they formed a musical partnership that would last 10 years. “What made it interesting,” she says, “is that we were both growing—both out there experiencing music. Every time we came together we’d share what we’d experienced. We had this band [the boldly progressive Night Flight] and we arranged songs that were way out there, taking the music as far as we could. We worked at this club called the Comeback Inn out in Venice Beach, and they paid us by passing the hat. But it was cool because it was a chance to really find our voices.” As she explained to Herb Wong in the liner notes for The Palo Alto Sessions CD (an anthology of Reeves’ first two albums, recorded in 1982 and 1985 and produced by Wong), “Billy gave me license to go anywhere musically…. There was telepathy between Billy and me—we read each other’s minds, and my ears were broadened as a result.”
Around the time she met Childs, Reeves got a call from a pal in Sergio Mendes’ band who told her, “‘He’s looking for a new girl singer. You should come in and audition.’ Well, when I got there, the first thing he asked was, ‘Are you good with languages?’ I’d never sung in any other language but I’d learned “How Insensitive” from Flora Purim’s Stories to Tell, so I said, ‘I know “Insensatez” in Portuguese.’ He was impressed! I got up there, he started playing, I started singing, and I could see that he was laughing so hard that tears were practically coming out of his eyes. Still, he hired me. Only later did his wife tell me, ‘You really butchered our language!’”
Touring the world with Mendes was, says Reeves, “simply amazing. I had just two weeks to learn 13 songs in Portuguese, but you do that sort of crazy stuff when you’re young. Sergio was a remarkable person. Wherever we went he would know every head of state, and he would always sing a song in the local language. Even when we went to Israel, he sang in Yiddish. He was beyond the performance, always providing insights into different cultures and explaining the evolution of the music he loved.”
After a year or so with Mendes, Reeves learned that world music pioneer and global goodwill ambassador Harry Belafonte was on the lookout for an African-American singer for his touring troupe. “He brought me to New York,” she recalls, “and introduced me to this wonderful band of musicians from everywhere—Caribbean roots, African roots, European roots. We’d all get together in a workshop setting and work out the arrangements. The musicians opened up my world with rhythms that I’d never experienced in my life, and we’d create these wonderful arrangements of everything from Bob Marley songs to South African songs about the Zambezi River.” Equally valuable to Reeves was her exposure to Belafonte the international humanitarian. “I remember we went to East Berlin, and it was the first time I heard him in a more political arena. I knew his connection with the Civil Rights Movement but had only heard him sing and never heard him speak. It was so moving. He wanted us to have a front-row-center seat to see what was happening in the world. It was an amazing experience.”
In 1987, good fortune again smiled on Reeves. Lundvall caught her appearance on the all-star TV tribute Echoes of Ellington and invited her to join the recently resuscitated Blue Note label as its first female vocalist. With Childs and Duke on hand for moral and professional support (the former served as musical director for her first eight Blue Note outings; the latter has produced six of them), Reeves’ trademark eclecticism shone through from the very beginning. On her eponymous Blue Note debut she led the likes of Herbie Hancock and Freddie Hubbard on a musical journey that extends from the sweet nostalgia of “Better Days” and silken majesty of “I Got It Bad” to the Latin-tinged sophistication of “Sky Islands” (a holdover from her Caldera days) and funkified shimmer of “That’s All.” Other critic-confounding, audience-pleasing efforts followed: the soulful Never Too Far, the dynamically multinational Quiet After the Storm, the richly pop-oriented Bridges, the gorgeously romantic That Day.
Arguably, Reeves is at her absolute best when championing her idols. In 1996 she and Clark Terry assembled a sterling who’s who for an aptly titled The Grand Encounter. Bringing together Phil Woods, Harry “Sweets” Edison, Toots Thielemans, Kenny Barron, Al Grey, James Moody and Joe Williams (who teamed with Reeves for sublime renditions of “Let Me Love You” and “Tenderly”) was, she says, “something I wanted to do because when I was just starting out and working with Clark he made me very conscious of who these geniuses were. I saw it as my chance to share with them like they shared with me. There’s only one thing I missed out on. In between takes and during the breaks it was nothing but stories. They were just laughing and reminiscing and having a good time, but for me their stories were unbelievable. I wanted to run a tape, but it didn’t happen. Now that so many of them—Al, Sweets, Joe—are gone, I really wish I’d captured all those stories.”
Five years later, Reeves, “fulfilled a dream born when I first heard Sarah Vaughan sing as a teenager.” Backed by a 42-piece band, the singer whom esteemed vocal critic James Gavin says “shares many of Vaughan’s gifts: a gleaming, pitch-perfect voice, a multioctave range; and a harmonic sense that takes her on some remarkable flights of fancy,” honored every phase of Sassy’s long, multifarious career on The Calling. A stunning tribute, highlighted by Reeves and Childs’ celebratory “I Remember Sarah” and rivaled only by Carmen McRae’s Sarah: Dedicated to You, it earned Reeves her second Grammy.
Journeying back to Portia Nelson’s “Five Chapters,” the serene, centered Reeves believes she’s successfully navigated the first five and has embarked on a self-styled Chapter Six. “All my life,” she muses, “I have, without knowing, swum upstream. There were things I dreamed of that did happen, things I dreamed of that didn’t, and things I’d never even thought of that entered my life and were wonderful. Finally, I started taking notice of the fact that everybody has their own plan. So, Chapter Six involves turning around in the stream, going were the stream wants me to go and feeling a lot more peace in my life. There have been a lot of things in the past few months that have been very tragic. It’s been a time for me to reflect and reach deeper into my soul and use the strengths I’ve learned from my mother and grandmother and aunts and sister to think positively as I move forward.”
And how, in the spirit of the sultry “Is That All There Is?” that Reeves performed on Sex and the City, would she like her final chapter to read? “Ooooh,” she ponders. “I guess the biggest thing would be that I kept my course, stayed true to myself and, somewhere along the way, inspired at least one other person to maintain their focus and keep their eye on the prize.”
As with Bobby McFerrin (one of the few artists who rivals her multiplicity), critics continue to be stumped by Reeves’ professional legerdemain, often damning her for the very assets that make her unique. Chatting over breakfast during an early summer concert stop in Buffalo, N.Y., Reeves recalls a particularly painful moment of journalistic mean-spiritedness. “It was several years ago in Arizona. A reviewer called me up and I was very honest with him, musically speaking, about a lot of different things. His story appeared the next day and the headline was ‘Raking Reeves.’ At the end of it he said that as long as people continue to listen to people like Dianne Reeves, Al Jarreau, Bobby McFerrin and Manhattan Transfer jazz will be on the decline. I never had an article hurt me so badly because I knew that my jazz foundation enabled me to absorb a world of music. I knew that one of my talents was my versatility and I loved that in my life. Because of that versatility I’ve had the opportunity to share music with all sorts of different people on all sorts of different levels.”
For years afterward, Reeves avoided her own press. “Good or bad,” she says, “I just would not read it; I just didn’t want to know.” She’s since grown philosophic about the slings, arrows and bouquets tossed her way. “Some of the comments were pretty hard—really hard—but I just had to get through it. Now my attitude is, ‘This is what I’m doing: take it or leave it’.”
Projecting a Zenlike complacency similar to that of her friend and sometime collaborator Roy Hargrove (“He doesn’t think music,” she enthuses. “He is music”), Reeves seems enviably contented. Though healthily pragmatic and perhaps overly self-effacing, she is—on stage, on disc and in person—simply who she is. No pretense, no ego, no grandiosity, no games. Professionally speaking, things have never been rosier. Her 16-year, 11-album relationship with Blue Note is one of trust and mutual respect. It is, she says, “a place where they really love the music and love the artists. I can call up [Blue Note president] Bruce Lundvall and we don’t even have to discuss music. We can talk about a million other things, which is really nice. The biggest thing, though, that makes artists want to be there is the freedom to have yourself documented as you change and grow. I can be myself without ever having to compromise my music.”
Her latest release, the misty, all-acoustic, all-standards collection A Little Moonlight, was motivated by “my love for my band”—pianist-arranger Peter Martin, bass player Reuben Rogers and drummer Gregory Hutchinson. “We came together about a year and a half ago. All three of them worked with Betty Carter and really learned to both accompany and inspire. I don’t ever look at them as a backup band. We’re all equal contributors to the whole sound. I really wanted to capture the love, the intimacy we share. And their energy is so great. I’ve been so blown away by them, so inspired in my soul, that it caused me to go to the gym and lose 50 pounds just so I could keep up.”
A gorgeously romantic compilation, Moonlight was produced by legendary diva architect Arif Mardin, who aptly describes the experience as “truly a magical adventure. We really had a fabulous time, and I think the album, so intimate and heartfelt, is one of her best. I’m known to add a lot of stuff to my productions—horns and strings and such—but the power on this album comes from a three-person rhythm section playing so well and at such an energy level that they sound like a big orchestra. And, of course, there’s her singing! Even her scatting, which sounds like a tenor sax, has so much meaning. Unlike a lot of other jazz singers, there’s no throwaway. Every note she sings has relevance. I can tell you I think she’s going to get another Grammy for her performance.”
Reeves’ continent-jumping touring itinerary remains jampacked through 2004. Despite the breakneck schedule, she’s signed on as the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association’s Creative Chair for Jazz and is calling on such esteemed colleagues as Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett and Wynton Marsalis to shape a series of performances at the Walt Disney Concert Hall that she promises will be “a little bit of heaven for the jazz enthusiast.” And just to add a layer of icing to an already sweet year, this past June she and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler (surely one of the most intriguingly odd musical couples imaginable) were recipients of honorary Berklee doctorates.
Though refreshingly taciturn about personal matters (no fan of kiss ’n’ tell publicity, her private life, centered around relatives and friends in her adopted home town of Denver, is private), Reeves is happy—indeed eager—to share family history in song. Longtime fans recognize the sepia-tinted “Better Days” as a pillar of her early career. Though also known as “The Grandma Song,” it pays broader homage to all the matriarchal figures—grandmother, mother, elder sister, aunts and great aunts—who, after the death of Reeves’ father in 1958, defined her childhood and adolescence. “Even though,” she remembers, “my mother remarried and my stepfather was wonderful, the family was entirely run by women. All of them had a significant influence on shaping my perspective because they were very strong and fiercely independent. When tragedy would strike, they’d deal with it and move on. They gave me my independence and my security, and taught me to move forward no matter what.”
Reeves picks up the autobiographical thread in “The First Five Chapters” (included on her live, Grammy-winning In the Moment from 2000), a rich slice of self-analysis adapted from the Portia Nelson poem “Autobiography in Five Chapters.” In the prelude, a determined 18-year-old Reeves decides to set off on her own in pursuit of a singing career and debates the relative merits of New York and L.A.:
I could starve and be cold in the East/Or starve and be hot on the West Coast.
Los Angeles won. “The biggest reason,” she says, “was that my cousin, George Duke, was there. Also, back then the music that really rang for me was the early fusion music. I remember dancing to Bitches Brew when nobody was home. I’d have it up loud and just let my imagination run wild. It seemed like most of the fusion musicians were in L.A., and I wanted to go out there and see it and be in it.”
Arriving in California, she joined the Latin fusion group Caldera and then linked up with pianist Billy Childs. “Billy heard me sing with Caldera and wanted me to record his ‘Lullaby’ but,” she recalls with a giggle, “didn’t think he could afford me because he thought I was really big time! At the same time, a friend of mine said, ‘There’s this piano player I really think you oughta know’ and gave me Billy’s number. Six months went by. Finally I called him and said, ‘Hi, this is Dianne Reeves, and I’m calling to see if I can get piano lessons from you.’ The lessons never happened. Instead, they formed a musical partnership that would last 10 years. “What made it interesting,” she says, “is that we were both growing—both out there experiencing music. Every time we came together we’d share what we’d experienced. We had this band [the boldly progressive Night Flight] and we arranged songs that were way out there, taking the music as far as we could. We worked at this club called the Comeback Inn out in Venice Beach, and they paid us by passing the hat. But it was cool because it was a chance to really find our voices.” As she explained to Herb Wong in the liner notes for The Palo Alto Sessions CD (an anthology of Reeves’ first two albums, recorded in 1982 and 1985 and produced by Wong), “Billy gave me license to go anywhere musically…. There was telepathy between Billy and me—we read each other’s minds, and my ears were broadened as a result.”
Around the time she met Childs, Reeves got a call from a pal in Sergio Mendes’ band who told her, “‘He’s looking for a new girl singer. You should come in and audition.’ Well, when I got there, the first thing he asked was, ‘Are you good with languages?’ I’d never sung in any other language but I’d learned “How Insensitive” from Flora Purim’s Stories to Tell, so I said, ‘I know “Insensatez” in Portuguese.’ He was impressed! I got up there, he started playing, I started singing, and I could see that he was laughing so hard that tears were practically coming out of his eyes. Still, he hired me. Only later did his wife tell me, ‘You really butchered our language!’”
Touring the world with Mendes was, says Reeves, “simply amazing. I had just two weeks to learn 13 songs in Portuguese, but you do that sort of crazy stuff when you’re young. Sergio was a remarkable person. Wherever we went he would know every head of state, and he would always sing a song in the local language. Even when we went to Israel, he sang in Yiddish. He was beyond the performance, always providing insights into different cultures and explaining the evolution of the music he loved.”
After a year or so with Mendes, Reeves learned that world music pioneer and global goodwill ambassador Harry Belafonte was on the lookout for an African-American singer for his touring troupe. “He brought me to New York,” she recalls, “and introduced me to this wonderful band of musicians from everywhere—Caribbean roots, African roots, European roots. We’d all get together in a workshop setting and work out the arrangements. The musicians opened up my world with rhythms that I’d never experienced in my life, and we’d create these wonderful arrangements of everything from Bob Marley songs to South African songs about the Zambezi River.” Equally valuable to Reeves was her exposure to Belafonte the international humanitarian. “I remember we went to East Berlin, and it was the first time I heard him in a more political arena. I knew his connection with the Civil Rights Movement but had only heard him sing and never heard him speak. It was so moving. He wanted us to have a front-row-center seat to see what was happening in the world. It was an amazing experience.”
In 1987, good fortune again smiled on Reeves. Lundvall caught her appearance on the all-star TV tribute Echoes of Ellington and invited her to join the recently resuscitated Blue Note label as its first female vocalist. With Childs and Duke on hand for moral and professional support (the former served as musical director for her first eight Blue Note outings; the latter has produced six of them), Reeves’ trademark eclecticism shone through from the very beginning. On her eponymous Blue Note debut she led the likes of Herbie Hancock and Freddie Hubbard on a musical journey that extends from the sweet nostalgia of “Better Days” and silken majesty of “I Got It Bad” to the Latin-tinged sophistication of “Sky Islands” (a holdover from her Caldera days) and funkified shimmer of “That’s All.” Other critic-confounding, audience-pleasing efforts followed: the soulful Never Too Far, the dynamically multinational Quiet After the Storm, the richly pop-oriented Bridges, the gorgeously romantic That Day.
Arguably, Reeves is at her absolute best when championing her idols. In 1996 she and Clark Terry assembled a sterling who’s who for an aptly titled The Grand Encounter. Bringing together Phil Woods, Harry “Sweets” Edison, Toots Thielemans, Kenny Barron, Al Grey, James Moody and Joe Williams (who teamed with Reeves for sublime renditions of “Let Me Love You” and “Tenderly”) was, she says, “something I wanted to do because when I was just starting out and working with Clark he made me very conscious of who these geniuses were. I saw it as my chance to share with them like they shared with me. There’s only one thing I missed out on. In between takes and during the breaks it was nothing but stories. They were just laughing and reminiscing and having a good time, but for me their stories were unbelievable. I wanted to run a tape, but it didn’t happen. Now that so many of them—Al, Sweets, Joe—are gone, I really wish I’d captured all those stories.”
Five years later, Reeves, “fulfilled a dream born when I first heard Sarah Vaughan sing as a teenager.” Backed by a 42-piece band, the singer whom esteemed vocal critic James Gavin says “shares many of Vaughan’s gifts: a gleaming, pitch-perfect voice, a multioctave range; and a harmonic sense that takes her on some remarkable flights of fancy,” honored every phase of Sassy’s long, multifarious career on The Calling. A stunning tribute, highlighted by Reeves and Childs’ celebratory “I Remember Sarah” and rivaled only by Carmen McRae’s Sarah: Dedicated to You, it earned Reeves her second Grammy.
Journeying back to Portia Nelson’s “Five Chapters,” the serene, centered Reeves believes she’s successfully navigated the first five and has embarked on a self-styled Chapter Six. “All my life,” she muses, “I have, without knowing, swum upstream. There were things I dreamed of that did happen, things I dreamed of that didn’t, and things I’d never even thought of that entered my life and were wonderful. Finally, I started taking notice of the fact that everybody has their own plan. So, Chapter Six involves turning around in the stream, going were the stream wants me to go and feeling a lot more peace in my life. There have been a lot of things in the past few months that have been very tragic. It’s been a time for me to reflect and reach deeper into my soul and use the strengths I’ve learned from my mother and grandmother and aunts and sister to think positively as I move forward.”
And how, in the spirit of the sultry “Is That All There Is?” that Reeves performed on Sex and the City, would she like her final chapter to read? “Ooooh,” she ponders. “I guess the biggest thing would be that I kept my course, stayed true to myself and, somewhere along the way, inspired at least one other person to maintain their focus and keep their eye on the prize.”
http://www.thenewblackmagazine.com/view.aspx?index=644
Sound of Blackness
by Kalamu ya Salaam
Kalamu.com
DIANNE REEVES
Don’t do like I did. Don’t sleep on the far-ranging and deeper-than-deep talent of Dianne Reeves.
Long time ago, I acquired one of Dianne’s CD entitled Art + Survival. As far as I was concerned, this was the pinnacle of her work. A beautiful marriage of insightful and socially aware content with exquisite artistry.
This was about "art" in a commercially-oriented pop world and about "survival" within an oppressive and exploitative society. This was an amazing recording.
Dianne’s voice is breathtaking in both its sustained beauty, especially on the ballads and in the gambits she dares. She successfully takes tremendous risks with her vocal technique, and each time hits the mark on point.
And content-wise, this is a Nina Simone type statement. Bold, completely forward, no apologies and no prisoners taken. Ms Reeves is a full out bad, beautiful strong Black woman.
And I guess, paradoxically, the brilliance of Art + Survival blinded me and kept me from fully appreciating the full range of her greatness. I would listen to a few other of Dianne’s albums, but none of the ones I heard had the social consistency and total artistic daring of Art + Survival. So I cherished the one CD and only occasionally would dip into the others. But that was a mistake that caused me to overlook Art + Survival’s live twin - New Morning.
Born October 23, 1956 in Detroit but raised in Denver by her grandmother, Dianne’s first major recognition as a jazz artist came from trumpeter Clark Terry who was impressed when he heard her sing in a high school band in 1974. Terry became her mentor.
In 1976, Dianne started a long apprenticeship, working first with Eduardo del Barrio in his Latin band Caldera. Dianne also worked with pianist Billy Childs and had a stint singing with Sergio Mendes. From 1983 to 1986, she toured with Harry Belafonte as a lead singer. In 1987, she was the first vocalist to sign to Blue Note Records.
Beginning with her album In The Moment in 2001, Dianne Reeves achieved what no other vocalist has ever done: a string of three successive Grammys for best jazz vocalist. In 2006 she picked up a fourth Grammy for her soundtrack album Good Night, And Good Luck. She is perennially picked as the best living jazz vocalist.
"The powerful but mellow alto of Ms Reeves wafts through the film, as ubiquitous and atmospheric as the smoke from Murrows' cigarettes," says The New York Times.
As far as I am concerned, her only competition as a jazz vocalist is Cassandra Wilson and I feel fortunate that I live in a time period when both are performing and recording. A recent review of her recording catalogue finds me leaning toward Dianne as a pure jazz vocalist.
Three characteristics stand out for me. First is the beauty of her instrument. Like they say in Latin, it’s “alter,” which means both high and deep—a perfect definition of her range and the way she uses her voice. “One More Time” and “Anthem” are evidence enough to convince any skeptic.
Second, Dianne Reeves is a conscious artist, deeply spiritual (“Old Souls”) and also socially concerned (“Endangered Species”). Dianne is an artist who has remained on the frontlines throughout a long and distinguished career. It takes a tremendous amount of commitment to stay strong for as long as she has.
Third is her deep embrace of Latin American and African traditions. You hear it leaping out of her music at a level usually only achieved by instrumentalists of the highest caliber. It’s not just the rhythms, it’s also the lyrics. She is a direct descendant of Dizzy Gillespie responding to Chano Pozo with Afro-Cuban religious chants. Dianne has obviously studied the Afro-religious music and not just the popular music of the Caribbean, Brazil and West Africa.
Dianne Reeves can scat with the best but she is doing far more than just making up some sounds that sound like Afro-Cuban or Brazilian chants, she is actually using an alternative liturgy.
At times it’s almost as if she is channeling a houngan. Her utterances are so fluid, so captivating. Oddly enough, the best example of this is on her version of “Summertime,” which she calls “Summertimes.” She uses the plural perhaps to indicate the diverse sources/diverse summers her rendition both draws on and offers.
“Summertimes” is taken from New Morning, one of a number of live recordings Dianne Reeves has done. New Morning is significant for a couple of reasons. A large portion of the material is from Art + Survival. The band is a basic piano, bass, drums trio but the kicker is: the musicians are all native New Orleanians. David Torkonowsky on piano, Chris Severin on bass, and Herlin Riley on the drums. I highly recommend New Morning.
One listen to “Summertimes” and you know you’re in the presence of some other kind of greatness, some obviously Afro-centric type of greatness. I really like how Dianne takes her time and crafts a performance that goes through different moods. It is a spirited finale of a hugely successful set recorded in Paris, France in 1997, three years after Art + Survival.
As for her jazz chops, check out what Dianne does with the standard “Body And Soul.” This the John Coltrane influence, probably second-hand through Dexter Gordon. Until Trane, "Body And Soul" was mostly a ballad or mid-tempo song.
Coltrane came with that uptempo, Afro-flavor burnout. Dexter took a cue from Trane and came up with a hip vamp on which he built a distinctive version that in turn had been adopted by a number of musicians, vocalists as well as instrumentalists.
Dianne’s “Body And Soul” is a killer. She is stretching out; opens with long tones but then cuts loose with enchanting scatting during her solo. This is jazz, what jazz ought to be. Her choice of notes is an impeccable high-wire act and her rhythmic surefootedness makes a mountain goat look clumsy.
If you get Art + Survival and New Morning you will have an advanced course in jazz vocals that is hard to match. Do like I eventually did: wake up and get with the greatness of Dianne Reeves.
Kalamu ya Salaam is a New Orleans-based writer and filmmaker. He is also the founder of Nommo Literary Society - a Black writers workshop.
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music-arts/dianne-reeves-interview-jazz-singer-favors-sophisticated-new-york-audience-article-1.133979
Dianne Reeves interview: Jazz singer favors 'sophisticated' New York audience
by Greg Thomas
DAILY NEWS WRITER
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Dianne Reeves performs two evenings in Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Hall this weekend.
PASCAL GUYOT/AFP/Getty Images
Dianne Reeves performs two evenings in Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Hall this weekend.
Fresh off a tour in Germany, four-time Grammy award-winning jazz singer Dianne Reeves turns to love of the mature variety Friday in the first of two evenings in Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Hall.
Love is one reason Reeves performs each year at Jazz at Lincoln Center.
"I love New York City," she says, "because there's something to do 24-7, something that will make you see things in a whole different light. Like they say: it's the city that never sleeps."
She also favors the New York audience.
"There are always very sophisticated listeners. I love the audiences because they're active listeners," she says. "They really hear every subtle nuance."
Reeves has explored love and emoption over the course of her career, starting with her first recording, "Welcome to My Love," in 1977. Her most recent effort, "When You Know "(2008), was a reflection of the love she has come to know.
"That's something that's abiding, uncompromising and compassionate," she told Jazz.com when the record was released. "And it includes the love for self and all the love that you can give to change things."
Reeves draws her set from the work of female singer-songwriters — Bessie Smith, Lena Horne, Irene Kitchings and Abbey Lincoln, Joan Armatrading, Anni DeFranco and Tracy Chapman. Considered by many the premiere female jazz vocalist around, she is trying to draws attention to both notable and not-as-well known female lyricists in these shows.
Last summer, Reeves toured with fellow vocalists Lizz Wright, Angélique Kidjo, and Simone, the daughter of Nina Simone. When asked by Jazz at Lincoln Center to come up with a concept for these concerts, Reeves decided to stay in the same vein. She'll be supported by pianist Peter Martin, guitarist Romero Lubambo, bassist Reginald Veal and drummer Terreon Gully.
"I'm going out on tour this summer again with Angélique and Lizz," she says. "The first time we celebrated the music of Nina Simone, and it was pretty extraordinary. So, this year, still under the banner of Sing the Truth, we decided to focus on other singer-songwriters or songs that were closely associated with female singers that did them."
Performing the songs of female songwriters isn't new to Reeves. She has long had songs by Joni Mitchell in her repertoire. What's new is her appreciation of the history and depth of such songs.
"I started doing research and I didn't even realize how many songs in my own repertoire, besides my own, are in there," she says. "So when Jazz at Lincoln Center asked me, I decided to tie in this theme and explore this voice all year."
When asked to describe the result of her recent research into that female voice, she says: "The biggest thing is this: They are very clear, very honest, about what they feel in particular situations. That's the kind of thing I found in the lyrics of all the women.
They're making their point without trying to sugar-coat anything.
"For instance, we might perform 'Don't Explain,' associated with Billie Holiday. Although it's said that Arthur Herzog wrote those lyrics, I really, really think Billie Holiday wrote them because of the reality of the situation, and what's she saying, without inhibition — it's almost like viewing someone's very soul, something that is very secretive, something that you shouldn't even see and hear."
The story goes that Billie Holiday wrote "Don't Explain" after her husband came home with lipstick on his collar.
Like her forerunners Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae and Dinah Washington, Dianne Reeves also taps into the music of her time for material, whether or not that music originated in a jazz context.
For instance, she likes "All That You Have Is Your Soul" by folk singer Tracy Chapman. Mary Chapin Carpenter is associated more with rock, blues, pop, folk and country than jazz, yet Reeves loves her song "Why Walk When You Can Fly" and may perform it this weekend.
"The lyrics of that song are very timely. Politically and economically, a lot of things are changing. And basically the song is about being the best that you can be and contributing your best to whatever situation you find yourself in."
https://www.sfjazz.org/events/2015-16/0211/dianne-reeves
Dianne Reeves
Thursday, February 11, 7:30pm
at SFJAZZ Center, Miner Auditorium
Dianne Reeves
Songs of Love Series: Week of Love
Almost Sold Out
Dianne Reeves
For swooning romance and pure sensuous delight, no voice in American music can rival the divine Dianne Reeves. An artist who embodies jazz’s enduring values of elegance, class and improvisational poise (which isn’t to say that she can’t get earthy when a song requires a little grit), Reeves has been one of the music’s brightest stars for more than three decades. With a string of GRAMMYs, including an unprecedented three consecutive Best Jazz Vocal Performance awards and another for her contributions to the soundtrack of George Clooney’s film Good Night and Good Luck, she’s a performer with a gift for imbuing any performance space with the intimacy of a living room. Her Concord Records debut, Beautiful Life, won the 2015 GRAMMY for Best Jazz Vocal Album, melding jazz with elements of R&B, pop and Latin music. Whether putting a personal stamp on lilting Brazilian standards, exploring contemporary fair by Ani DiFranco and Stevie Nicks, or interpreting American Songbook classics by the Gershwin, Porter and Berlin, Dianne Reeves always gets to the heart of a song. More than two generations have passed since jazz stars took on aristocratic titles, otherwise Dianne Reeves would surely be known as The Queen.
Artist Personnel
Dianne Reeves vocals
Romero Lubambo guitar
Peter Martin keyboards
Reginald Veal bass
Terreon Gully drums
Artist Website
diannereeves.com
"She roams and explores, growls and catches at notes and phrasings. It is this audacity that makes Reeves’ voice an awesome instrument. " — People
"Dianne Reeves is one of our generation’s definitive jazz masters, a vocal stylist of extraordinary skill and vivacity"
— Huffington Post
Dianne Reeves
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Dianne Elizabeth Reeves (born October 23, 1956) is an American jazz singer.
Biography
Dianne Reeves was born in Detroit, Michigan, into a musical family. Her father sang, her mother played trumpet, her uncle is bassist Charles Burrell, and her cousin is George Duke. Her father died when she was two years old, and she was raised in Denver, Colorado, by her mother, Vada Swanson, and maternal family.[1] Reeves was raised Catholic and attended Cure D'Ars Catholic School in Denver for much of her early schooling.[2][1]
Career
In 1971, she started singing and playing piano.[3] She was a member of her high-school band, and while performing at a convention in Chicago was noticed by trumpeter Clark Terry, who invited her to sing with him. "He had these amazing all-star bands, but I had no idea who they all were! The thing I loved about it was the way they interacted with each other – the kind of intimate exchange that I wasn't part of. For a young singer, it was fertile soil."[4] She studied classical voice at the University of Colorado.[5]
Reeves moved to Los Angeles, where she sang and recorded with Stanley Turrentine, Lenny White, and Billy Childs.[6] She recorded with the band Caldera,[7] then founded the band Night Flight with Billy Childs, with whom she would collaborate again in the 1990s. She moved to New York City and from 1983 to 1986 toured with Harry Belafonte.[3]
She signed with Blue Note in 1987 and that year her eponymous album, featuring Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, and Tony Williams, was nominated for a Grammy Award.[6] She went on to win five Grammy Awards.[8]
Music critic Scott Yanow has said of her: "A logical successor to Dinah Washington and Carmen McRae, Reeves is a superior interpreter of lyrics and a skilled scat singer."[9] Her sound has been compared to that of Patti Austin, Vanessa Rubin, Anita Baker, and Regina Belle.[9]
Reeves performed at the closing ceremony of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.[6] In 2005, she appeared in the film Good Night, and Good Luck singing 1950s standards[9] (including "How High the Moon", "I've Got My Eyes on You", "Too Close for Comfort", "Straighten Up and Fly Right" and "One for My Baby"). In 2006, the soundtrack won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album.[4]
Discography
- Welcome to My Love (Palo Alto, 1982)
- For Every Heart (TBA & Tapes, 1984)
- Ballerina with Marcy Levy (BBC, 1984)
- Dianne Reeves (Blue Note, 1987)
- The Nearness of You (Blue Note, 1988)
- Never Too Far (EMI, 1989)
- I Remember (Blue Note, 1991)
- Quiet After the Storm (Blue Note, 1994)
- Art & Survival (EMI, 1994)
- Three Ladies of Jazz: Live in New York (Jazz Door, 1995)
- The Grand Encounter (Blue Note, 1996)
- New Morning (Blue Note, 1997)
- That Day (Blue Note, 1997)
- Bridges (Blue Note, 1999)
- In the Moment – Live in Concert (Blue Note, 2000)
- The Calling: Celebrating Sarah Vaughan (Blue Note, 2001)
- A Little Moonlight (Blue Note, 2003)
- Christmas Time Is Here (Blue Note, 2004)
- Good Night, and Good Luck (Concord, Jazz, 2005)
- Music For Lovers (Blue Note, 2006)
- When You Know (Blue Note, 2008)
- Beautiful Life (Concord, 2013)
- Light Up the Night: Live in Marciac (Concord, 2016)
Filmography
- 1991: Appeared as singer in Guilty by Suspicion, directed by Irwin Winkler
- 2005: Appeared as jazz singer in Good Night, and Good Luck, directed by George Clooney
- 2005: Dianne Reeves "Live in Montreal" (Montreal International Jazz Festival 2000)
- 2008: Dianne Reeves: The Early Years with Billy Childs and Snooky Young
Awards and honors
- Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album:
- 2003: Honorary doctorate, Berklee College of Music[10]
- 2015: Best Album, Jazz FM Awards, Beautiful Life
- 2015: Honorary doctorate, The Juilliard School[11][12]
- 2018: NEA Jazz Masters
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Dianne Reeves.
- Official website
- Interview video Bamboo-music.com (English & French), March 2008.
- Thierry Quénum, "In Conversation with Dianne Reeves", Jazz.com, June 15, 2008
- Felix Contreras, "Dianne Reeves: A Jazz Voice With Pop Sensibilities", NPR, February 1, 2011
