Ferrell Still Harnessing Runaway Vocal Talent

If there’s a singer in popular music with a more commanding voice than that of Rachelle Ferrell, it’s hard to imagine who it might be. A vocal wizard on her initial albums in the early ‘90s, she has become during a several-year recording hiatus an even more mesmerizing performer. On Saturday at the Wiltern Theatre, she seemed determined to use her multi-octave range to produce virtually any imaginable sound.

The results were, to say the least, amazing. Leaping from basso growls to high-pitched whistling, grunting, growling, simulating guitar feedback, shifting into cooing sensuality, moving just as easily into declamatory, gospel-like melismas, she was an astonishing, one-woman display of the capabilities of the human voice.

But too often the virtuosity came at the cost of her songs, which took a distinct second place in the concert to her vocal pyrotechnics. There were times, in fact, when many of her songs--both old ones and material from the new album “Individuality (Can I Be Me?)”--seemed to be either introductions or settings centered on the improvised excursions with her voice.

For most of the nearly full-house audience, that was good enough, with her more highflying sorties generating standing ovations. And when she brought her brother, Russ Barnes, on for a duet, the stakes were even higher, with the talented siblings tossing lines back and forth at each other with the sheer abandon of a battle between jazz tenor saxophonists.

And it was in moments such as these, moments when Ferrell’s technical gifts were clearly matched by her talent for musical invention, that one wondered about what might have been--in fact, about what might still be, given a more focused use of her skills.

Ferrell’s early work appeared to stamp her as the next great jazz singer. But even then her apparent difficulty in finding the center of her extraordinary talent seemed to draw her more toward the theatricality of pop than the creative dynamism of jazz. Saturday’s program suggested that not much has changed since then, and that a powerful musical gift is not yet being employed to its fullest creative capacity.