Jeff Baker Phrases After a seven-year hiatus
from recording, contemporary jazz vocalist Jeff Baker is preparing to release
Phrases, his fifth and most ambitious album to date. The new CD, due from OA2
Records on January 19, marks Baker's debut as a composer, with seven of the
album's songs featuring his music and lyrics.
The album
takes its title from Baker's use of what he calls "prompts" from
favorite works of fiction, poetry, and song, among them texts by Pablo Neruda,
J.D. Salinger, and Salvador Plascencia. Those cues could be no more than a line
of poetry or a snatch of dialogue, or a real-life verbal exchange that caught
his ear.
"The
musical side of composing -- creating melodies, reharmonizing music -- has
always come pretty easy to me," Baker explains. "But in attempting
lyrics, I always felt burdened by not being Joni Mitchell. How could I express
myself without sounding trite or silly? I found that if I gave myself prompts,
I could create stories around them and find my voice as a lyricist. My aim was
to tell stories in which people could hear their own experiences."
The deeply
reflective, lushly nuanced music on Phrases is performed by a stellar septet
whose front line includes alto saxophonist Steve Wilson and trumpeter Marquis
Hill. Protean drummer Brian Blade provides the recording with its ebb, flow,
and pulse. Pianist Darrell Grant both plays and serves as musical director and
co-producer while Baker's longtime friends Clark Sommers and Geof Bradfield
appear on bass and tenor saxophone, respectively. Young guitarist Gregory
Uhlmann, a former student of Jeff Parker, is one of the album's stand-outs. The
listener can hear how the musicians are drawn to the singer in their inspired,
beautifully shaped solos.
Phrases was
recorded in Chicago in May 2017 at Vijay Tellis-Nayak's Transient Sound
following a live performance at the hip Fulton Street Collective. "Jazz
musicians talk all the time about their 'Dream Bands,'" says Baker. "Here
I am, getting to record with my actual Dream Band! I wrote this music with
these musicians in mind, and I am beyond humbled that they've agreed to be part
of this project."
Born in 1979
in Boise, Idaho, Jeff Baker was 13 when the Seattle-spawned grunge rock
movement hit. But while his friends were thrilling to Nirvana and Pearl Jam,
Jeff was discovering Dizzy Gillespie's Live at the Village Vanguard. "It
was the best thing ever," he says. "I learned every song and taught
myself to sing with them. Singing jazz, the idea that a vocalist could be an
instrumentalist and take the music to different places on a lark, was a real
revelation to me. My goal became to be equal and in line with instrumental
players."
Jeff's
teachers and mentors "made sure I had opportunities to experience the
music at the highest levels!" Chet Baker (no relation) was a major
discovery for him, as were Mark Murphy and Johnny Hartman. The music of
wide-ranging artists such as Sting and Peter Gabriel resonated deeply with him,
as did that of Bonnie Raitt (whose "Not Cause I Wanted To" he covers
on Phrases) and minimalist master Steve Reich, whose influence can be felt in
the moving harmonies, piano ostinato, and streaming eighth notes on
"People of Paper."
Jeff Baker
Baker attended Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, on a singing
scholarship, sang in the jazz and classical choirs, and studied opera and
musical theater. With plentiful opportunities to perform, he continued
educating himself as a jazz vocalist. Backed by Idaho musicians, he recorded
his first album, Baker Sings Chet, largely to raise money to attend graduate
school. He never went, but working in the studio, he says, "became kind of
my graduate school."
The Chet
Baker project, released on Origin Records' OA2 imprint, did well enough to
enable Baker to make another record, Monologue, for which Origin head John
Bishop hooked him up with versatile Seattle pianist Bill Anschell. It proved to
be a fruitful collaboration. Baker and Anschell teamed up on two more acclaimed
albums, Shopping for Your Heart (2007) and the gospel-infused Of Things Not
Seen (recorded at the same time as Shopping, it was released with re-recorded
vocals in 2009).
In 2012
Darrell Grant, a distinguished member of the music faculty at Portland State
University, helped Baker land a position at PSU, where the singer was
instrumental in building what came to be a renowned jazz vocal program. Baker
also co-founded and is director of the PDX Jazz Forward Competition.
"We
live in an incredible time for creative, genre-defying music," says Baker.
"Artists like Laura Mvula, Becca Stevens, Jacob Collier, The Fellowship
Band, and so many others are changing the way we think about jazz and
contemporary songwriting. It's a privilege to write and make music at this
time. Phrases is my humble contribution to this ever evolving
conversation."
