Vondie Curtis Hall, the Broadway, TV and film star, joined forces with the Antoine Drye Quartet to show off his jazz chops. He found the perfect venue and musicians to help him display his rich voice and interpretative skills. Smoke is an intimate restaurant that makes it possible to observe the artists’ every nuance.

The Antoine Drye Quartet, led by Drye on trumpet, is a classic jazz ensemble. The musicians, Paul Odeh on piano, Adam Cote on bass and Jeremy Clemons on drums, play off each other with an astonishing musical shrewdness.

The Quartet opened the set with “My Ideal” (Whiting/Chase/Robin), a jazz standard.  There were intricate and quick-witted changes of tempo, which they caught on to like flocks of birds turning in unison as they fly. Each musician was given his own aural space for his solos with just enough rhythmic and harmonic support from the others, sometimes just an occasional chord on the piano or a windswept riff on the bass or drums.

Hall’s numbers combined singing with autobiographical stories about how his dance career led to bigger roles and, not coincidentally, some romantic encounters.  He followed a pattern:  singing a bit, stepping off the stage to allow the Quartet to improvise, then returning to finish up with a few measures of singing.  “In the Hands of Time” (Gioeli/Gioeli/Schon) was a casual love song which led to “Sack Full Dreams” (D. Hathaway) about dreaming of a better world. “Your Kiss” was a dreamily romantic ballad.

“Never Will Forget,” sung to a rollicking 6/8 accompaniment, ended the set conflating the song with a story of dating a pretty young lady during the rehearsals for his first Broadway show, It’s So Nice to Be Civilized.

It was great to see five musicians playing great music and to hear Vondie Curtis Hall spread his vocal “wings.”

Joel Benjamin
Cabaret Scenes
August 29, 2012
www.cabaretscenes.org