Hilary Kole’s Vocal Style Overtakes Substance

from the Amazon.com Web page for the recording being discussed

After a few weeks of confusion, probably a side-effect of pandemic conditions, the latest album of jazz vocalist Hilary Kole has finally secured a page on Amazon.com. Sophisticated Lady is an eleven-track album devoted primarily to standards, with the title track introducing the album with one of Duke Ellington’s compositions. (To be fair, however, Ellington first composed this piece as an instrumental in 1932. Words were later added by Mitchell Parish; and that version, sung by Adelaide Hall, was not recorded until 1944 with Hall backed up by Phil Green And His Rhythm, rather than Ellington’s orchestra.)

That hiatus of about a dozen years should not be surprising. Bearing in mind that one seldom approaches Ellington in terms of a theoretical infrastructure, it is worth noting that Ellington had a prodigious command when working with sizable intervallic leaps; and “Sophisticated Lady” shows off that command at its best. However, if the tune itself is irresistible in its “sophistication,” it is a killer for vocalists, even those with rigorous classical training.

Kole’s Wikipedia page cites her attending the Manhattan School of Music but says nothing about when (if ever) she graduated. To be fair, however, she may not have graduated because, during her student days, she landed a gig at the Rainbow Room, which kept her busy six nights out of the week. Her successful command of the Great American Songbook led to subsequent bookings at the Blue Note, Birdland, and the Algonquin Hotel.

Nevertheless, readers may have noted that I can be very picky when listening to jazz vocalists. That is because, for better or worse, I expect any singer to make sure (s)he has nailed all the intervals (from the chromatic half-step all the way up) before adding stylizing tropes to the delivery. In that context, I have to confess serious disappointment in how Kole handles those aforementioned intervalic leaps in “Sophisticated Lady.” To be fair, her account of Ellington’s “In a Sentimental Mood” takes a somewhat more secure account of those intervals (unless one is listening for the lapses, for which I plead guilty-as-charged).

Some of the difficulty may be due to the arrangements. These were made by Chris Bryars, who plays a variety of wind instruments. On “In a Sentimental Mood” he is playing flute, which has its own share of problems when one needs to establish intonation. On the other hand his command of “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” on saxophone could not be more satisfying, while Kole’s approach to Irving Berlin’s intervals is even weaker than her approaches to Ellington; and, by the time the album closes with Richard Rodgers’ “The Sweetest Sounds,” she seems to have thrown any serious intentions regarding intonation to the wind.

The other instrumentalists are guitarist John Hart, pianist Adam Birnbaum, Paul Gill on bass, drummer Aaron Kimmel, and Tom Beckham on vibraphone. Whatever intonation difficulties Bryars may have had with this flute, his’ arrangements place all of these players in a perfectly good light. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, this is, after all, supposed to be a vocal album.