JAZZ REVIEW : Alexandria Comes Out of Shadows

Lorez Alexandria has never quite received the recognition that her work has deserved. Much respected by musicians, as well as other singers, she has spent a good part of her several decades-old career in the shadow of performers like Sarah Vaughn and Ella Fitzgerald.

Alexandria’s opening night set at Marla’s Memory Lane Friday night demonstrated, however, that she is an artist with much to offer. To her credit, and rare for most jazz singers, she sang a program that added brand new songs to the usual collection of familiar standards, sultry ballads and hard swinging up tempos.

The always-dependable trio of Art Hillary on piano, Clarence Johnston on drums and Allen Jackson on bass opened the evening with a group of jazz-worthy tunes--”The Night Has a Thousand Eyes,” “It Could Happen to You” and “Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise”--that were energized by Jackson’s smooth, harmonically evocative bass lines.

Alexandria kicked off her part of the show with a hard rocking groove on “I Wish I Knew” and a somewhat less-dynamic “Bittersweet.” She hit her stride with Johnny Mercer’s “I Remember You” and Duke Ellington’s “I Got It Bad.”

But her finest moments came on new songs like “Sweet Pumpkin” and “Where Have You Been.” Obviously delighted to have material that she can mark with her own stamp, Alexandria produced interpretations that reached into the heart of the music--especially during a moodily introspective rendition of Arthur Hamilton’s lovely “Are You With Me?”