Grammy nominee Tierney Sutton brings her jazz to Munson-Williams-Proctor on Saturday
Tierney Sutton is a vocalist with a jazz pedigree, a veteran band, consistent critical acclaim, an enduring sense of faith and a day job. Educated at the Berklee School of Music, Sutton began her recording career in 1998 and has since earned three Grammy nominations for Best Jazz Vocal Album (2005-2007) as well as a selection by Jazzweek as Vocalist of the Year in 2005.
She and her band (Christian Jacob, piano; Trey Henry and Kevin Axt, bassists; and Ray Brinker, drums) have performed with such diverse artists as James Taylor, Placido Domingo, Ray Charles, Natalie Cole and Bonnie Raitt in venues including the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl and Lincoln Center.
Sutton has also taught in the vocal department at the University of Southern California and, since 2008, has been the Vocal Department chair at the Los Angeles Music Academy in Pasadena. A practitioner of Middle Eastern faith Baha’i since 1981, Sutton uses the tenets of her faith in her interpretations of the Great American Songbook.
Her latest CD, Desire (Telarc, 2009), a collection that kneads familiar, oft-recorded standards into personalized jazz abstractions, is a reflection of the belief that “our lives are a constant journey between lower desires and higher desires.”
Sutton will bring her veteran band to the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, 310 Genesee St., Utica, on Saturday, Jan. 22, 8 p.m. Tickets are available at 797-0055 or (800) 754-0797 or online at www.mwpai.org. She recently spoke to The New Times from her engagement at New York City’s Birdland.
Q: Tell me about your band and your current tour. A: We’ve been together for more than 17 years. On the album we use both bass players but we’ll only have one on this tour; I believe Kevin {Axt} will be with us. We’re on and off the road all the time. We’ll be home for four or five days after this run in New York and then we have the Utica show and a show in New Jersey. And then we’ll be going to Manila and then to Singapore.
Q: What’s in the repertoire for the Utica concert? A: Our sensibility is very much a pure improvisational jazz sensibility. It’s how we approach things. We always want to keep our repertoire fresh, that the experience of playing is special and unique. We never do the same set of music twice. What people can expect is that we don’t know what we are going to play until we feel the hall, until we see what kind of piano sound there is, what a fan may have requested. You can expect a surprise.
Q: What are your influences as a jazz singer? A: The nature of the art form is that you want to be influenced by as many people as possible. As a singer my biggest influences have been my bandmates. They have their own influences and they introduce me to different artists. Originally I listened to more instrumentalists than vocalists. Although I did listen to the greats: Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McRae. I am a huge fan of Bobby McFerrin and Al Jarreau. They’re singers that express themselves more instrumentally. And even {my former student} Gretchen Parlato. My favorite singer on the tour today is Rachelle Serrell.
Q: Why do you think there are more women singing jazz than men today? A: That’s definitely the case. It’s an interesting question. I think it has to do with the psychology of the art form, the vulnerability and the point of view. In our culture women are more comfortable developing as singers than men. Just as many boys may have a gift for singing, but it’s not as encouraged, culturally.
Q: How much of your life is devoted to teaching today? A: I’m pretty busy on the road so I’m not teaching as much as I like. I taught for 11 years as part of the Jazz Studies Program at USC. I left because I was too busy touring, but I had private students and did workshops on the road. I started teaching to support myself. Then I realized it was a real inspiration to work with young singers. Their perspective is so fresh and wonderful that I learn a lot from them. Then I was approached by a small music college in Pasadena, the Los Angeles Music Academy, and they asked me to become their vocal department head and that it would be OK to continue my road life. It’s been really wonderful. We have great singers there.
Q: The collection of standards called the Great American Songbook has been covered many times by many people. Is it overexposed? A: No. The reason people record those songs is because they’re great songs. They have an architecture and an integrity musically. For musicians who are students of music and look at the structures, harmony and melody, they’re just really good songs. There’s a lot of places that you can go with them as an improviser. These songs are just a lot of fun to work with. I’m trying, on the next album, to look at some new avenues, some old folk songs, some Americana music and different things.
Q: How do you approach reinterpreting this familiar material? A: I have a really wonderful band and we are collaborators. The first step for me is to know the lyrics, melody and harmonics of the song, and get inside it and figure out what can be pulled out of it that hasn’t been pulled before. It’s all of us working together. We’re trying to serve the soul of the song, on some level.
Q: Tell me about the theme of your latest CD, Desire. A: The idea of desire is that you want some things that are good for you and you want some things that are empty and aren’t good for you. The non-material things that we want are more important than the material things, and that often our desire for other people becomes a material thing. If you listen to the first and the last songs on the album you get the idea of my perspective.
