‘Singers Over Manhattan’ Lands Again at Jazz at Lincoln Center

Of all the different programs presented by Jazz at Lincoln Center, the “Singers Over Manhattan” series has always seemed to be the one most clearly designed for the pure pleasure of the audience. Sure, as with other offerings at the venue there has always been a larger cultural implication, but you didn’t think about that so much at these shows, which were inaugurated in 2001. In those early days, Singers Over Manhattan was hosted in the Kaplan Penthouse, on top of the Samuel B. and David Rose Building on West 65th Street, which boasts a spectacular view of the Upper West Side skyline from a vantage point right in the middle of it. Everyone was even provided with a glass of wine to help get us all in that mellow mood. Once the Allen Room — now the Appel Room — opened in 2004, it was a natural home for Singers Over Manhattan. The view there is perhaps even more impressive, as it includes Columbus Circle, the gateway to Central Park, and almost all of Central Park South clear down to the Plaza on Fifth Avenue. This past weekend, JALC relaunched the series, the first Singers Over Manhattan concert since the pandemic, with three vocalists — two storied veterans and a talented newcomer — all working with the prodigious young pianist Emmet Cohen.Mr. Cohen kicked off the 86-minute show with a bang, a fast-and-furious piano feature from his “Uptown in Orbit,” being released this week by Mack Avenue Records. Willie “the Lion” Smith’s “Fingerbuster,” first recorded by the legendary piano professor in 1934, is, as the title implies, a showcase for relentless digital dexterity. Mr. Cohen keeps the overall stride feeling with a steady two-beat, yet modernizes it slightly by shifting some of the melodic and rhythmic responsibility to his bassist and drummer, Philip Norris and Kyle Poole. Still, there’s one passage where the others drop out for a minute or so and the piece becomes pure, unaccompanied stride piano. At this point, about three minutes into the track on the album, Mr. Cohen accentuates the connection to the past by having the recording mimic the sonic characteristics of relatively low-fi audio from 90 years ago.On Saturday night, the 20-something Lucy Yeghiazaryan entered with a vintage Ella Fitzgerald favorite, “Robbins’s Nest,” by the pianist Sir Charles Thompson; she caught the mellow groove of the song perfectly — even including Fitzgerald’s signature quote from “Poinciana” right after the first chorus, though I’d advise her to switch to “Just When We’re Falling in Love,” a superior lyric to the same melody that Fitzgerald recorded on her final album, in 1989. She followed with a swinging “From This Moment On” and the iconic jazz samba “Girl From Ipanema (Garota de Ipanema),” sung in Portuguese.Johnny O’Neal, who turned 66 this month, is an outstanding double threat of a performer who excels at both piano and singing. He seems to be mainly appreciated by other musicians and jazz insiders who come down to hear him at Mezzrow and Smalls in the West Village, which is surprising because he’s a ferocious crowd-pleaser who knows how to get a house rocking with a basic blues — in this case the mid-tempo number sung by the late Joe Williams as “Who She Do?” Mr. O’Neal started with the ballad “In The Wee Small Hours,” in which the inclusion of the verse suggested that he learned this classic torch song from Johnny Hartman rather than Frank Sinatra. His mini-finale was a highly moving mash-up of Duke Ellington’s “Come Sunday” and Allan Sherman’s most intimate ballad, “Did I Ever Really Live.” That also, I would bet, was learned from Joe Williams.Mary Stallings scored heavily with her first ballad, “I Thought About You,” delivered achingly slowly — one of many Johnny Mercer lyrics (to a Jimmy Van Heusen melody) about trains. In her performance, you can really feel every stop that it makes. The Jon Hendricks lyric to “Monk’s Dream” was also surprisingly slow and ruminative, rather than dreamy. She then delivered a knockout punch with a samba-fied rendition of “You’re Sensational” prefaced by a verse that even Freddy Cole, who sang this Cole Porter song for decades, never used.For a grand finale, Mr. Cohen united all three vocalists in a slow blues medley: Ms. Stallings drawing on Billie Holiday’s “Fine and Mellow,” Ms. Yeghiazaryan with Duke Ellington’s “Rocks in My Bed,” and Mr. O’Neal with Jimmy Rushing’s “Jimmy’s Blues.” Then, as a fast encore, all three singers joined in the Count Basie perennial “Broadway,” an appropriate choice, given the location. At the start of her set, Ms. Yeghiazaryan told the assembled crowd that even though the view behind her was fantastic, the view in front of her — a sold-out house full of people anxious to hear some great live music — was even greater. Amen to that.

‘Singers Over Manhattan’ Lands Again at Jazz at Lincoln Center

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