Whether on her own highly-acclaimed albums, as a 25-year
member of the beloved vocal group New York Voices, or as co-founder of two
diverse and inventive supergroups, Moss and JaLaLa, singer/songwriter Lauren
Kinhan has always forged her own path as a performer, composer and improviser.
With her latest, A Sleepin' Bee (due out October 6 on her own Dotted i
Records), Kinhan once again steers herself in unexpected directions with a new
release that is at once the first all-standards collection of her career, a
loving tribute to legendary vocalist Nancy Wilson, and unmistakably a Lauren
Kinhan album - with all the unique perspective and idiosyncratic personality
that has come to imply.
If the sudden appearance of an album's worth of standards in
a catalogue dominated by original songs comes as a surprise, the process of its
creation is just as atypical. While Kinhan spent much of 2016 conceiving,
rehearsing and workshopping the project, the circumstances of the recording
arose suddenly through the auspices of her alma mater, Berklee College of
Music. The session suddenly became an educational opportunity as well as a
record date, providing a small group of Berklee students the invaluable
privilege of observing and engaging in a recording session at the highest
level.
First and foremost, though, A Sleepin' Bee is a celebration
of Nancy Wilson on the occasion of the genre-hopping singer's 80th birthday.
While Kinhan shares Wilson's penchant for blurring stylistic boundaries, her
choice of material focuses on Wilson's early jazz albums, particularly her
collaborations with Cannonball Adderley and George Shearing. Those recordings
proved to be a jumping-off point for Kinhan, who utterly transforms these classic
and obscure numbers with the help of pianist/creative partner Andy Ezrin and
veteran producer Elliot Scheiner as well as a stellar band featuring bassist
Matt Penman, drummer Jared Schonig and special guest trumpeter Ingrid Jensen.
With three brilliant albums of her own songs under her belt,
not to mention her game-changing work with three distinctive vocal groups and
wide-ranging collaborations with singular artists from Ornette Coleman to Bobby
McFerrin, Kinhan decided it was finally time to create an album more in line
with the jazz tradition of interpreting a book of standards. Of course, Kinhan
has never been one to follow an obvious route, so the results quickly became
something wholly her own. "I approached this project similarly to the way
I write songs, except that in this case that creativity was expressed in the
arranging and approach to the lyrics," she explains. "I wanted to
make an album that was inspired by Nancy Wilson but still conveys my point of
view in the way that I think about, interpret and reimagine music."
The starting point for the project quickly became Nancy
Wilson/Cannonball Adderley, the 1961 album on which the 24-year-old singer was
backed by Adderley's incredible quintet with his brother Nat, pianist Joe
Zawinul, bassist Sam Jones and drummer Louis Hayes. Kinhan had fallen in love
with the album as a young girl searching through her parents' record
collection, enamored with both Wilson's soulful voice and her elegant image.
"I remember being 7 or 8, staring at the cover of this beautiful woman in
a yellow dress and connecting with the songs, the arrangements and the bite of
her tone. I know those songs like I know the songs of Carole King and Joni
Mitchell. So revisiting them, they feel like a favorite cashmere sweater."
The 12 tracks on Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderley were
evenly split between vocal and instrumental pieces, and Kinhan interprets all
but one of the vocal tunes on A Sleepin' Bee. To fill out the repertoire, she
began delving into Wilson's catalogue - only reaching 1964 before she had more
than enough to work with. The remaining repertoire is carefully cultivated from
Wilson's early-60s releases, the bulk of it coming from The Swingin's Mutual!,
Wilson's 1960 collaboration with pianist George Shearing.
"In a way," Kinhan says, "A Sleepin' Bee is
also a tribute to Cannonball and George Shearing and the fine musicians that
played on the original recordings. The pairing of the voice and great players
is what it's all about. It's never just about singing for me; it's the whole
creative spectrum of arranging notes and form, and connecting with the
musicians."
Those elements are combined and rearranged in disparate and
intriguing ways throughout A Sleepin' Bee, from the laid-back swing of
"Let's Live Again" to the haunted melancholy of "You Don't Know
What Love Is," whether stretching the melody like taffy on "Never
Will I Marry" (parried by Berklee classmate Jensen's darting trumpet) or
finding a playfully bold character at the heart of the title tune. She
effectively melds Nat Adderley's "The Old Country" with Billy
Strayhorn's "Passion Flower," and fully imbues "Born To Be
Blue" with the remorseful mood inherent in its title. Kinhan's vulnerable,
stripped-down version of "Save Your Love For Me" completely
reimagines Wilson's iconic take - which Kinhan previously performed both with
and for Wilson herself, first on a recording with the New York Voices and later
with the Voices as part of Wilson's 2004 induction as a National Endowment for
the Arts Jazz Master.
Perhaps the most surprising inclusion is Wilson's debut
single, "Guess Who I Saw Today," whose lyrics haven't exactly aged
well. Kinhan puts a new twist on the tune not only with her sly vocal
performance - which acidly comments on a song that frames its tale of infidelity
with some decidedly Eisenhower-era social mores - but with an updated
arrangement that makes the song her own, apart from Wilson's quintessential
version.
"You better have a perspective on this song, especially
as a woman who's been an outspoken feminist my whole life," Kinhan says.
"It's not that cheating is old-fashioned; it's the way that the story is
pitched from the beginning, drawing an outmoded picture of marriage where the
woman stays home, does the shopping and dotes on her husband, who spends his
day at work. To chew on those words was so strange - but it was also fun to
hold that mirror up to society and look at its absurdity."
"(You Don't Know) How Glad I Am" was a fresh
discovery for Kinhan in her research for the project. Despite Wilson's
recording having won a Grammy in 1964, it was not that version but a less
ornate live rendition that grabbed Kinhan's ear, and she takes a similar approach,
powerfully singing with gospel-inflected soul accompanied only by Ezrin's
lyrical piano and Penman's subtle bass. The at times inane lyrics of
"Happy Talk" are sent up in a slapstick carnival atmosphere to close
the album on a particularly offbeat note.
Recording the album with multiple Grammy-winner Elliot
Scheiner at Berklee's state-of-the-art Shames Family Scoring Stage meant
turning the studio into a classroom, a prospect that at first seemed daunting
but that Kinhan quickly embraced. "The students brought a performance
atmosphere to the session that was beautiful," she says. "Normally
recording sessions can make you incredibly self-conscious, often putting
yourself under the microscope, but knowing there was an audience was really
liberating. The students witnessed great players laying it down right in front
of their eyes, and that made for an inspired environment. The added bonus of
sharing Nancy Wilson's legacy with them was a Sleepin' Bee we hope to have
reawakened for generations to come."
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