JAZZ REVIEW : Inner Voices Need No Help With Holiday Season Music

Inner Voices didn’t initially seem like a complete ensemble Sunday afternoon at the Jazz Bakery. Four singers, no back-up musicians and no instruments except for an occasional toot from a pitch pipe to set a key.

But the members of the a cappella vocal quartet didn’t need much aside from their voices (although they performed several numbers with a prerecorded track and piano) to create a collection of appealing holiday season music. With personnel--Morgan Ames, Donna McAfee, Melissa Mackay and Clif Payne--consisting of widely experienced studio singers, the ensemble, which assembles annually for Christmas performances, balanced their energetic enthusiasm with solid, professional clarity.

The harmonies of jazz are, for many listeners, the music’s most elusive element. Resting beneath melody and above the rhythm, they provide texture, color and a foundation for improvisation. Vocal groups like Inner Voices afford a unique opportunity for the rich, ever-changing complexities of harmony to come to the forefront.

The program ranged from the familiar (“White Christmas,” “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and “O Holy Night”) to such unusual items as the surprisingly insightful “Cherry Tree Carol,” the Catalan carol, “Fum, Fum, Fum” and the contemporary “Liz and Ralph and Calvin” (“I want Liz and Ralph and Calvin under my Christmas tree. . . .”).

Each singer articulated the often densely layered harmonies well (with only a few opening night slips and slides of pitch), and each used brief solo spots to advantage. Ames, the group’s leader, is a dependable section worker, while Mackay has the kind of warm, autumn-toned timbre that works well with late-night jazz singing. Payne’s lush baritone filled out the bottom of the chords and burst into soaring gospel melismas in his individual passages, and McAfee’s almost impossibly high soprano had the sweet, embracing quality of a lead voice in an angelic choir.

Appropriately, Inner Voices concluded the celebratory evening by singing carols with the audience.

* Inner Voices at the Jazz Bakery. Thursday and Friday at 8:30 p.m. 3233 Helms Ave. (310) 271-9039. $15 admission.