Rubin Settles for a Merely Lush Sound

Vanessa Rubin, who opened a five-night run at the Jazz Bakery on Wednesday, is a jazz singer who seems to have all the elements in the right place. She has a lush sound, an understanding of rhythmic phrasing and the ability to bring an improvisatory quality to her interpretations.

Despite all that, despite her considerable experience (she has been recording for nearly a decade, first on Novus/RCA, currently on Telarc), Rubin’s opening set had a surprisingly lackluster quality.

There wasn’t much to argue with in her selection of material, which was far-reaching, ranging from Duke Ellington’s soulful “Come Sunday” and an upbeat rendering of Vincent Youmans’ “I Want to Be Happy” to Kurt Weill’s “Speak Low” and Billy Preston’s “Born Again.” And Rubin received efficient support from the trio of David Colligan on piano, Kenny Davis on bass and Marvin “Smitty” Smith on drums.

But her own contributions were deficient in several areas. The most significant was a failure to deliver the lyrics of her songs in a particularly communicative fashion; jazz singing is about storytelling too. Rubin’s pitch was also a bit shaky in spots--notably so during an otherwise effective version (with solo piano accompaniment) of the Legrand-Bergman hit “The Summer Knows”--a thorny problem for a singer who, in her better moments, can sing with the sweeping melodic grandeur of Sarah Vaughan.

Call it an off night or first-set jitters, but it wasn’t up to the level that Rubin appears capable of delivering. And she has far too many skills to ask her listeners to accept anything less.

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* Vanessa Rubin through Sunday at the Jazz Bakery, 3233 Helms Ave., Culver City, (310) 271-9039. $20 admission tonight and Saturday at 8 and 9:30 p.m.; $18 admission Sunday at 7 and 8:30 p.m.