Tierney Sutton‘Paris Sessions 2’ (BFM Jazz)What’s the best place in the world to sing a bossa nova? Why, Paris, of course. Tierney Sutton’s latest album, “Paris Sessions 2,” starts with a beautifully lyrical reading of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Triste” in Portuguese, with Ms. Sutton accompanied by guitarist Serge Merlaud and bassist Kevin Axt. Why not travel to immediate post-pandemic Paris to sing a Brazilian song? Ms. Sutton’s work is full of such out-of-the-box thinking: She seems to prefer being described as a bandleader rather than a singer — her appearances are customarily billed as “The Tierney Sutton Band” rather than just her name by itself. Likewise, sometimes her performances seem to be about the arrangement rather than the song, stressing above all the interplay between her voice and the musicians. With players as good as the ones she normally works with, one can hardly blame her. At Dizzy’s this past week, two longtime collaborators, pianist Christian Jacob and Mr. Axt on bass, were joined by drummer A.J. Strickland. Ms. Sutton’s second number on Friday was “On a Clear Day (You Can See Forever),” a breathtaking number that featured more turn-on-a-dime, razor-sharp tempo changes and abrupt shifts in rhythm than I could count. There were moments when the time shifted from 4/4 to 3/4 and back again within a matter of micro-measures, and I didn’t even try to keep track of the key changes. It was all exciting stuff of the kind that has brought her Grammy nominations not only for singing but arranging.Still, for me the most magical moments are her more straightforward interpretations, when she sings the song without the admittedly thrilling musical fireworks. The songs of her great friends, Alan and the late Marilyn Bergman, invariably bring out the absolute best in her. There are Bergman songs on virtually all her albums and in every show I’ve seen; the Dizzy’s set started with “Windmills of Your Mind,” in which the Bergmans’ vivid imagery of a turning windmill was underscored by Mr. Strickland’s persistently circular percussion patterns. These ballad readings should not be described as simple, since the playing of her collaborators is always harmonically profound. Mr. Jacobs and, on her two “Paris Sessions” albums, Mr. Merlaud are exceptionally brilliant and intricate, above and beyond the call of duty. At Dizzy’s, she sang the Bergmans’ “On My Way to You” and “Every Now and Then” with just Mr. Jacobs’s piano, and though he never indulges in a virtuoso display for its own sake, you can tell that he has enough pure chops to assume the place of an entire orchestra.Ms. Sutton’s first “Paris Sessions” album (2014) begins with a song by a French composer, Michel Legrand’s “You Must Believe in Spring” (again with lyrics by our friends the Bergmans). At first this seems a rare example of her actually thinking inside the box, but then, it might be ironic that she doesn’t include the marvelous Mr. Jacobs, who happens to be a Frenchman, in either of her Paris projects. So far, these two CDs are my overall favorites in her discography; they’re the best examples of her concentrating on the words, the melody, and the inner meaning of the songs.Ms. Sutton has done relatively few theme and or songbook albums; she obviously prefers to keep every program as diverse as she can. (One recent and major exception was her set of “Sting Variations” from 2016.) The problem, which isn’t really a problem, is that she has so many good ideas that there hardly seems room for all of them. One recurring theme is her knack for finding worthwhile contemporary songs, often by singer-songwriters, and in combining them with equally worthwhile standards. On the new “Paris” album, she combines Yip Harburg and Vernon Duke’s “April in Paris” with Joni Mitchell’s “Free Man in Paris,” carefully crosscutting between the two like the climax of a D.W. Griffith movie, though the superimposition of the two never feels forced. Likewise, at Dizzy’s she astutely mashed up “Moon River” with Bob Telson’s “Calling You” (from “Bagdad Cafe”). She performed, too, a mini-suite of three songs from “Porgy and Bess,” including elaborate rewrites of the scat or wordless sections from “It Ain’t Necessarily So” and “My Man’s Gone Now.” She also added a significant nonverbal segment to “Summertime,” possibly to make it more of a piece with the others. This subset of the program made us all hungry to hear a whole program of that classic score, or even of Gershwiniana.But then, it’s hard to believe Ms. Sutton hasn’t yet done a complete album of songs by Alan and Marilyn Bergman, even though she presented a whole program of their music live at the Carlyle a few years ago. It remains my favorite-ever of her performances. She’s recorded dozens of their songs, but many more remain unsung; their words bring out her most intimate interpretations, her most clearly defined storytelling. A Bergman album by Tierney Sutton would also be proof that every now and then, the best ideas are the most obvious ones.
