Featured artists:
VOO DOO SCAT
It takes
no small courage to record a CD of standards, all of which have
been recorded 100ds of times by the very best the genre has to
offer: Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, to name
a few.
So if
the entry level criterion is you better have something to say
and say it well, Reminiscing, from Montreal’s Voo
Doo Scat, deserves A-major consideration. The group is a quartet
with its nucleus comprised of guitarist JF Giguère, the
steady breath that feeds the flame of singer Céline Bélair,
who, incidentally, is one of the members of
Moonlight Girls that burst onto
the scene during the 2005
Montreal Jazz Festival.
What
gives Voo Doo Scat its edge and notoriety are the highly innovative
and brave arrangements of JF Giguère, who writes to win
big time, which he does on most of Reminiscing’s
11 tracks. With high-tech and amplification assuming a more prominent
role, Giguère successfully introduces the standards to
21st century sound codes without betraying the music’s essence.
His intros, in particular, are inventive, where no effect, including
folk, is ruled out. Critical to Giguère’s refreshingly
radical remakes is the outstanding playing of alto saxophonist
Rémi Bolduc, whose busy bebop, often contrapuntal to the
mood, takes the music where you’d least expect it to go,
and once there, makes you wish he would stay. He’s one good
reason to catch this exciting group live, where he’s allowed
more space to fulfill Giguère’s vision.
The
wild card of the group, and an attractive one at that, is Céline
Bélair, whose stage charm could light up a colisseum, but
whose strong, dynamically versatile and top notch voice occasionally
lacks the control of the master and sometimes shows itself a bit
too self-conscious, that is overly concerned with singing well
instead of serving the lyric. But in all fairness, if she occasionally
falls short of the band, she often memorably exceeds it. And let’s
not forget that even the immortal Chet Baker sometimes dragged
out notes until they almost disappeared, and Ella overused the
technique of
melisma to the point of parody; and both managed
very nicely to survive the slings and arrows of their harshest
critics.
Staying
true to the founding frontier spirit of the group, Céline
approaches the mike as if it were a living creature under her
care, sharing with strangers what only music allows, where the
almost tactile closeness of the singing and breathing constitutes
an unbroken intimacy, which especially succeeds in "My Funny
Valentine" and "In a Sentimental Mood," while falling
a bit short in "Night and Day," whose promising beginning
strays into an unconvincing shift in mood and rhythm.
Not yet
30, there’s every reason to believe that Bélair,
whose strengths lie in her range and ability to shape a note,
will much sooner than later get the better of the proverbial learning
curve. That being said, she already joins the prestigious ranks
of Canadian jazz singers such as Carol Welsman, Susie Arioli,
Lee Aaron, Annie Poulain, Samina and Sophie Milman, who have made
the standards their cause célèbre, but
in Bélair’s case, under the inspired musicianship
of JF Giguère, she takes the music where the other names
have thus far feared to tread.
"My
Funny Valentine" is without doubt the diamond in the jewel
box of Voo Doo Scat’s debut album. The song opens with an
unlikely but arresting, spacey Wurlitzer reverb, out of which
arises, like the act of creation itself, the magnificent and tremulous
voice of Bélair that you feel is going to snap in mid-flight,
such is the high tension produced by what I believe will go down
as one of the most memorable and haunting interpretations ever
of this classic. With her eyes closed, hands clasped, her pristine
and perfectly modulated voce has the effect of turning
even the smallest club into a Cathedral a sound.
Voo Doo
Scat reminds us that for enduring music to endure, it must be
able to absorb new forms of expression that respond to and reflect
the concerns of the present no less than the original music revealed
the spirit of its time.
As you
might have divined, there isn't much that isn't heterodox about
Reminiscing, such that even when it falls short of what
its best forces you to expect, there are always lots of interesting
things going on both up front and in the background, the sum of
which promises a challenging and edifying listening experience.
Without
over-emphasizing the obvious, Voo Doo Scat’s first priority
has to be to get their music out there, because once out, there’s
no mistaking the originality and considerable talent that underwrites
it.
From
Reminiscing, listen to the divine "My
Funny Valentine," featuring the sublime Céline
Bélair.
