Review: Cyrille Aimée & The Guitar Heroes Captivate at Birdland

The night’s singing star, the ever-charming and creative Cyrille Aimée, seemed alternately blissed out or invigorated during the longish instrumental breaks as she listened to her band. Smiling during the styling, swaying during the playing, her head bobbing as the music was throbbing – one might have said she was their best audience, but the pleased paying patrons at Birdland seemed much more than tentatively attentive or semi-engaged during the engagement’s second night. It was the early set on Wednesday, March 19 in this run that goes through Saturday, with two shows each night. Putting guitar players prominently in the spotlight is not a new thing for the French-born jazz vocalist — a peppy, popular attraction – in her live appearances and recordings. Events with the billing worded as “Cyrille Aimée And The Guitar Heroes” appeared more than ten years ago and the current attraction is thus called a “Guitar Heroes Reunion.” Adrien Moignard and Michael Valeanu, on stage, are the masterful men on that instrument – acoustic and electric, respectively. Also making impactful contributions and getting featured time for prominence are bassist Tamir Shmerling and drummer Pedro Segundo. Jazz is very much a team sport in this focus-shared outing. 

The adept vocalist has such a cozy, warm-and-fuzzy appealing timbre that the sound and personality connect as almost instantly endearing, projecting a down-to-earth vibe. She can be relaxed and casual, which invites smiles, but it’s her tour-de-force, energized jazz dazzlers that bring vociferous applause.  Her spiffy scat-singing in its extended and more daring sections are starting to edge towards the model of the kind of wonders that the great Ella Fitzgerald regularly zipped through. And, at times, there’s a touch of the sighing traces of melancholy inherent in the work of another jazz legend: Billie Holiday.  However, Cyrille Aimée remains very much her own authentic, forthright self: captivating and confident.      

The repertoire on Wednesday was eclectic, with ample representation of the singer’s discography. Starting with the most recent, her release from last year, À Fleur de Peau –which contained mostly her own emotional compositions – was featured the most, but we also got a serene Cyrille reveling in independence with “Live Alone and Like It” from her all-Sondheim collection and the title songs from two albums:  It’s a Good Day and I’ll Be Seeing You. There’s cheer in the former item (written by Peggy Lee and her guitarist husband Dave Barbour) and the latter old standard is so redolent of bittersweet separation anxiety that it might as well have the subtitle “I’ll Be Missing You” due to the sorrow brought out so sincerely and clearly by the singer. Other samplings from the Great American Songbook were a refreshingly up-tempo take on the Gershwin brothers’ item that’s usually plaintive, “The Man I Love,” and a rousing “After You’ve Gone.” Also in the mix were post-Golden Age pop hits with revamps of the Michael Jackson hit “Off the Wall” and Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.” 

As per usual, Mademoiselle Aimée’s roots were honored with some lyrics sung in French along the way. (In the beginning of the show, when some sound issues were being worked out and she thought she might have to fill a bit of time with talk, she quipped, “I do know some jokes, but they’re all in French.”)  

While the Guitar Heroes set might not be ideal for those conservative music lovers who like singers to hew close to the way famous old songs were most famously rendered, don’t covet original material that is neither especially deep nor ear-wormy catchy, or like instrumental breaks to be short and sweet. But the adventurous jazz-leaning fan will find “heroic” playing and singing to relish and respect and revel in. 

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Learn more about the singer on her website at www.cyrilleaimee.com

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