Tonight was a good experience.  It exemplified to me where there is a big difference between jazz and cabaret performances, which often isn’t that easy to quantify.

Norma Winstone is a jazz vocalist with more than 25 CDs to her credit.  She began her career singing jazz standards in the late 1960s, but became involved in the avante garde jazz movement in the 1970s, exploring the use of the voice in an experimental way and evolving her unique approach to improvisation.  I say this by means of an explanation, because what happens, for me anyway, is that the lyrics suffer because the voice becomes a musical instrument rather than an instrument to convey emotion through words.  In her opening number, “Who Can I Turn To?,” her voice went through several vocal contortions, which were intriguing to hear, but there was no sense of the sentiment, and those are strong lyrics.  This continued for most of the songs, but Jobim’s “Two Kites” was one song were Norma made sense of the lyrics.  I also liked her version of “Stars.”

Norma’s style is unique and loved by many around the world, but it’s not really my cup of tea.  She has terrific musicians to support her.  Nikki Iles on piano is really superb, but Mark Lockhart on sax was the soul of the party.

Harold Sanditen
Cabaret Scenes
June 8, 2010
www.cabaretscenes.org