Thursday, July 29, 2021

Kenya Moses at Mr. Tipple’s Recording Studio


It’s been over three years since I last checked out the jazz at Mr. Tipple’s Recording Studio. That last occasion involved the Tenth Anniversary Tour of Lithuanian jazz singer
Viktorija Gečytė. As can be seen in the above logo, the venue offers “soul and spirits;” and Gečytė definitely knew how to mine soul out of each of her selections from the Great American Songbook.

Last night’s vocalist was Kenya Moses, and her source for soul was the bossa nova with particular attention to Antônio Carlos Jobim. She performed with the trio of Anne Sadjera on piano, Aaron Germain on bass, and Ami Morinelli on percussion. The instrumentalists provided a few opening selections and one during the middle of Moses’ set. Moses’ voice had clarity in both diction and pitch; and her style was more than sufficiently engaging, leaving me wishing that I could listen to her voice without the intervention of a microphone.

As I had observed on my last visit, “much of the clientele was there for the spirits.” As a result, anyone taking his/her jazz listening seriously had to contend with a rather imposing wall of chatter. Fortunately, the amplification system did much to deliver the efforts of the entire quartet to those of us that showed up to listen (which seemed to be a minority in the house). I was particularly impressed with the generous number of imaginative solos that Germain delivered in his bass work, and Morinelli deftly dealt with the sort of percussion variety one expects of bossa nova while contending with the limited space on the bandstand.

If the overall setting was a bit chaotic, Moses still prevailed as the still center of this entropic universe. Since I am unfamiliar with Portuguese, the best I can say is that I found her command of the language convincing. If the music was her primary guide through the rhetorical settings of the words, then she could not have taken her lead with greater satisfaction. I would definitely be curious to encounter her repertoire and delivery again, hopefully in a setting that is somewhat kinder to both the performers and their attentive listeners.

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