BWW Reviews: STACEY KENT Infuses Birdland With Sublime Sambas and Bossa Novas

Watching Stacey Kent perform Portuguese music with her producer, writer, arranger, and saxophonist Jim Tomlinson (who also happens to be her husband) has got to be the next best thing to actually being in Brazil. As she exhibited last night at Birdland for two shows, Kent gets this genre perhaps better than any other contemporary American performer. She performs with palpable sensitivity and infectious joie de vivre. Translated songs or those written by Tomlinson with such collaborators as author Kazuo Ishiguro and poet Antonio Ladeira are phrased with deep romanticism and offered with refreshingly unfussy brio.

"Listen . . . listen . . . " Kent whispers . . . rain is falling on the roses . . . she sings, beginning the show with "Double Rainbow," stepping side to side, eyes closed . . . the sun is going down in your eyes/I see the colors of the sea . . . There's a caressing ssss sound like frothy caps on small waves; the swishing of brushes (Josh Morrison), languid piano (Art Hirahara), mellow sax (Jim Tomlinson), and bass ballast (Tom Hubbard). We eeease into the evening.

Antonio Carlos Jobim's rhythmic "One Note Samba" (see video) and effervescent "This Happy Madness" are old friends (What should I call this happy madness that I feel inside of me . . . ). Kent appears visibly tickled by expressed feelings during "This Happy Madness." The gods are laughing far above (she laughs) one of them gave a little shove/And I fell gaily, gladly, madly into love . . . Here voice is completely distinctive; youthful, feminine. It has a Blossom Dearie quality but can also brightly open.

Also eminently familiar are "So Nice" (Marcos Valle, English lyrics by Norman Gimbel) with keyboard combinations like choreography and "The Waters of March" (Antonio Carlos Jobim), which Kent sings in duet with Tomlinson (warm voice.) This one elicits the spirit of two children at a playground. Verses bubble up like the dancing waters of a park sprinkler. The artists might almost be giggling.

"The Changing Lights" (Jim Tomlinson/Kazuo Ishiguro) is a Brazilian melody with contemporary lyrics. It talks of everyday activities, evolving feelings, journeys. The song suits both Kent's phrasing and likely her approach to life. Tomlinson's flute delivers shimmering melody like reflections in puddles after rain.

Material written for her, like this last offering, is described by Kent as aptly "sad, wistful, yet always full of hope." She's drawn to these qualities in Brazilian music and selected numbers like Johnny Mandel and Paul Francis Webster's "A Time for Love" (How does Kent achieve pitch and melody with a stage whisper?) and a mouthwatering "That's All" (Alan Brandt/Bob Haymes).

Kent also finds these sensibilities in Rodgers and Hammerstein, her favorite contributors to The Great American Songbook. "Happy Talk" (South Pacific) emerges a delightful, winking Bossa Nova as if it had been intended that way.

"Mais Uma Vez" is performed entirely in delicious Portuguese and seems to be a story song saying, "Yes, but . . . " While the music is lovely, even haunting, it's disappointing not to have shared in its lyric. Piano is fluid and deft. Notes flow one into the other with no sense of fingers rising and falling, like breathing, or again, like waves.

"Samba Saravah" (Pierre Barouh), the theme from A Man and A Woman, arrives in French, fully conjuring the hero's buoyant, insuppressible overnight drive to his love. Kent may burst with joy. A drum solo is astonishing in variation of textures and sounds. There's no getting around the fact that percussionists hear differently.

This is an irresistibly upbeat evening of superb musicianship and symbiotic performance.

Stacey Kent is at Birdland, 315 West 44th Street, NYC, for additional performances on 7/24, 7/25--two shows a night: www.birdlandjazz.com

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