Personable Reeves Makes the Right Connections

When Dianne Reeves stepped center stage at UCLA’s Royce Hall on Friday night and sang a phrase that began “A week ago Wednesday something very interesting happened to me,” her audience knew precisely what she was singing about. And her continuing description of how she found out that she had won a Grammy Award as best jazz vocalist was an amusing combination of musical spontaneity and warm, succinct storytelling.

The high points of her performance, in fact, were dominated by similarly conversational passages--initially when she greeted her audience in the middle of a lovely rendering of the old spiritual (and Cat Stevens hit) “Morning Has Broken” and later when she used a similar technique to introduce her musicians. (This latter effort, however, was not always as effective, since Reeves’ concern with scat singing around the names too often obscured them in crowd applause, thereby undercutting the process of acknowledgment.)

At her best, that capacity to connect with her listeners was the most convincing aspect of Reeves’ performance. She is an impressive improviser, and her impromptus were enhanced by a stunning command of her vocal timbres.

Much of the program, beyond the musical narratives, was devoted to material from her latest CD, “The Calling: Celebrating Sarah Vaughan,” with tunes such as the Gershwins’ “Embraceable You” (featuring the lush but delicate guitar accompaniment of Romero Lubambo and “Fascinating Rhythm,” and Kurt Weill and Ogden Nash’s “Speak Low.” The concert versions, backed by a quintet, differed considerably from the recorded efforts, which are framed by a full orchestra. And it is to Reeves’ credit as an artist that she moved so easily and comfortably from the larger-scale renderings of the recording to the more intimate, more penetrating versions with the smaller ensemble.

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Other high points included a perfectly paced version of Jerome Kern’s “Yesterdays” and an interpretation of Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo” that found both the roots and the sophistication of the song, spotlighted by the arching blues-driven accompaniment lines of Reginald Veal’s bass. But every piece had its special moment, always supported by, in addition to Lubambo and Veal, the intuitive responsiveness of pianist Otmaro Ruiz, drummer Gregory Hutchinson and percussionist Munyungo Jackson.

It was, all in all, the work of a jazz vocalist who has continually moved her work to new levels of achievement. Always at her best in live performance, Reeves’ appearance affirmed why her first Grammy was awarded for “In the Moment: Live in Concert.”