Tyreek McDole
Nine Orchard Hotel, Manhattan
March 3

There’s both a direct correlation and a distinct kind of a disconnect between the male singing voice and the saxophone family: For whatever reason, the male voice in the baritone register corresponds most satisfyingly with the tenor saxophone. I’m not sure why this is, but the results — most strikingly in a truly legendary album, “John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman” — speak for themselves.

Tyreek McDole, described on his website as “a 25-year-old Haitian-American vocalist from sunny Florida,” is one of only two male singers to have won the Sarah Vaughan competition in its 12-year-history. As a contemporary jazz baritone, he is the keeper of a great tradition.  Along with his two major musical partners, the pianist Caelan Cardello and the saxophonist Dylan Band, it’s clear that their primary inspiration, especially during appearances this week at the Zinc Bar, is the famous Coltrane “Classic Quartet” of 1962-’65.  

In fact, they began their Tuesday set with a hard-swinging waltz by Horace Silver, “Won’t You Open Up Your Senses,” but instead of evoking the composer, Mr. Cardello summoned up the modal, percussive sound of McCoy Tyner on such 3/4-time Coltrane classics as “My Favorite Things” and “Inch Worm.” Mr. McDole showed throughout the set that he has heard Johnny Hartman, as well as Leon Thomas, who sang with such post-Coltrane tenors as Roland Kirk and Pharoah Sanders; Andy Bey, who introduced “Open Up Your Senses” with Silver’s Sextet on the pianist’s 1971 album “United States of Mind”; and Bill Henderson, the expansively hip Chicago-born crooner who also sang with Silver.

While they made a Horace Silver tune sound like Coltrane and Tyner, the one tune that they performed from the actual Coltrane repertoire was Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life” — but rather than referencing either of Coltrane’s famous recordings, the 1958 quintet version with Donald Byrd and the 1963 masterpiece with Johnny Hartman, Mr. Tyreek’s rendition was completely original.

Accompanied only by Mr. Cardello, they rendered the entire song, verse and chorus, completely rubato — as far from a specific tempo as you could imagine. We in the audience kept expecting the two of them to break the mood and shift into something standard time, but they never did.

Although “Lush Life” is an outlier of a song — it’s way more nuanced, both harmonically and emotionally, than the majority of standards — it was perhaps the closest thing to a conventional love song essayed by Mr. McDole and his Quartet on Tuesday evening.  

Like the late Abbey Lincoln, Mr. McDole would seem to prefer philosophical songs to the standard ballads and torch songs. There are songs of self-affirmation, like D.C.-based pianist Allyn Johnson’s “Somalia Rose,” for which Mr. Band switched to soprano sax, as well as “The Backward Step,” by New Orleans-born trumpeter-composer Nicholas Payton, which utilizes what sound like meditational mantras as part of an internal journey of self-enlightenment. There’s also a drum interlude by Jerome Gillespie II.  

In addition to avoiding traditional love songs, Mr. McDole and his group also seemingly make a point to work in 4/4 — the time signature for 90 percent of jazz of the last 90 years — as little as possible. Yet still they embrace the tragi-comedy nature of the blues and are not above an old-fashioned novelty song. At the Zinc, their second number was Doc Pomus’s “Lonely Avenue,” a bleak, bluesy, and yet highly compelling dirge from the Ray Charles songbook.

Perhaps their most entertaining number is “The Umbrella Man,” a 1938 waltz that Dizzy Gillespie later transformed into a bebop comedy anthem that features the quartet chanting along with him. Mr. McDole led the house in a similar singalong on the last number, Leon Thomas’s highly optimistic “Sun Song,” which also featured a bass solo from Dan Finn and an exchange between Mr. McDole’s Andy Bey-inspired scatting and Mr. Band’s soprano.

Tyreek McDole may be the most compelling young male jazz singer I’ve heard in a generation or even two. At the start of the program, Zinc’s majordomo, Joseph Baldassare, accurately introduced Mr. McDole as “a great vocalist and a great sound.” He’s all that and more.