Learning song by song

Lizz Wright walked on stage at the Hollywood Bowl last summer a virtual unknown. Fifteen minutes later, she walked off a star.

Just kidding. But not by much.

There’d been talk around the music business for more than a year about a hot new singer who had been signed by Verve. But it wasn’t until the summer of 2002 that the buzz began in earnest -- first when Wright performed in Chicago in early July, and then a week later in her debut appearance at the Bowl.

The program at the Bowl, a tribute to the great jazz vocalist Billie Holiday, was a grab bag of styles showcasing talent that reached from Dianne Reeves to Jimmy Scott. But it was Wright’s brief segment, in which she sang “I Cover the Waterfront” and Holiday’s classic “Don’t Explain,” that captured the attention of what had been, up to that point, a somewhat laconic audience.

A bit unsteady on the first number, Wright, tall and slender in a silky, clinging gown, came into her own with the second -- her dark, opulent sound and gospel-tinged phrasing a convincing contrast to the memory of Lady Day’s bittersweet interpretation. So intimate was her connection with the crowd that it hushed to a mesmerized stillness.

Wright remembers the occasion as “one of the happiest days of my life.”

“I met Oleta Adams,” she recalled by phone last week from her New Jersey home. “I met Dianne Reeves, and Jimmy Scott and Terence Blanchard. I think it was the first time in my life that I was so overwhelmed that I could barely speak.

“I was nervous on the first song, and then on the second song I started getting into it. And I’m glad I got to do it. It was Billie Holiday’s tune, and I learned more about her, and from her, from just singing that song than I did from all the things I’ve read about her.”

That’s the sort of insight that flows freely -- and frequently -- from Wright, a 22-year-old who is a surprising mixture of youthfulness and worldly wisdom, an old soul who describes herself as “a very silly, giddy person.”

“When I’m feeling good,” she adds, “when I feel like myself, and when I’ve done my job of feeling present here in the world and doing all the stuff that people in the world do, then I kind of peel off and I let myself run free.”

A preview of her first CD

Those qualities, in combination with superb musical skills, underscore the growing anticipation surrounding the release of her first album, “Salt.” On Monday night, Southland listeners will have an opportunity to hear many of the tunes from the new CD at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts a month before it makes its way into the stores. In June, she will be featured at the Playboy Jazz Festival.

“Salt” has been more than a year in the making. An initial pass, with John Clayton producing, was set aside, in part -- according to Wright -- because “I had some more growing to do. By the time we recorded the music, we all could just hear that.”

Well aware of Wright’s potential, Tommy LiPuma -- chief executive of the Verve Music Group and veteran producer of gold albums and Grammy-winning efforts for everyone from George Benson to Diana Krall -- took over the production duties, aided by the talented drummer (and former sideman with Joni Mitchell and Wayne Shorter) Brian Blade.

The extraordinarily eclectic selections on “Salt” range from Mongo Santamaria’s Latin groove tune “Afro Blue” to the spiritual “Walk With Me, Lord.” Along the way, Wright takes on hits associated with Stephanie Mills (“Soon as I Get Home” from “The Wiz”) and Flora Purim (Chick Corea’s “Open Your Eyes You Can Fly”).

But the most intriguing inclusions are five songs written by Wright (one of them in partnership with her longtime piano accompanist, Kenny Banks). Nearly all bearing concise, one-word titles -- “Salt,” “Eternity,” “Fire,” “Silence” and the sole exception, “Blue Rose” -- they are the work of a rapidly burgeoning songwriting talent.

“I think it’s easier to retain life or to remember something in a song,” she says, “than it is in pictures or letters or anything. ‘Fire,’ for example, came when I was visiting at home, sitting on my mom’s bed.”

She sings a few lines:

Are you frightened by the fire in my eyes

It burns for you

And I know you see it too.

“It was almost a one-drafter,” Wright continues, “not quite, but the entire idea and feeling all came in a rush.”

The album’s great diversity inevitably raises the question of genre: Is it jazz? Is it pop? Is it R&B;? And the answer is that “Salt” includes elements of all those -- and more. Given the success that Norah Jones has had, starting out from an apparent jazz source and vaulting across genres into a No. 1 album and a handful of Grammy awards, no one at Verve will be unhappy if the CD makes it onto several charts.

But Ron Goldstein, president of the Verve Music Group, resists comparisons with Jones.

“I don’t see it at all,” he says. “Lizz writes tunes, her style is totally different. The whole package is different. If there’s anyone to compare her to, it’s more someone like India.Arie than Norah.”

Wright’s manager, Robin Burgess, also shies away from similarities to the Jones career. “To me, she’s more like Abbey Lincoln, who I love because of her ability to write songs and tell stories,” Burgess says. “But other people are going to hear completely different things in Lizz’s singing.”

Wright elects to make no comparisons. “It’s very hard for me to place myself alongside another artist. Everyone has something unique to express. For me, I just want to sing about life. And since I come from a spiritual background, I turned to jazz, because I feel it’s still sacred, like gospel. It’s serious music, but it allows room to sing about so much other stuff as well.”

Given that spiritual background, it’s amazing that Wright arrived at Verve at all, and she did only as the result of a surprisingly serendipitous turn of events. It began in the summer of 1999 in Atlanta, when Wright was just beginning to find her way as a jazz singer.

“I’d grab every chance I could get to sit in at a jam session,” she recalls. “And this one session was prime, because it was after the Atlanta Jazz Festival, and there were so many people there from all over. So I sang ‘Summertime,’ and I met this guy who got me together with a band called In the Spirit.”

“The first night I sang with In the Spirit, I knew two standards and I did them both. The crowd was asking for more and I didn’t know anything else. I looked at Kenny Banks -- who was playing piano -- and said, ‘What can you do with “Amazing Grace”?’ And he did this ridiculous, really bluesy, gospel thing, and I’d never sung like that in my life. It just made a different voice come out of me -- something deeper -- and it changed my life, took my past and brought it into the present.

“Maybe most important to me, it made it easy for me to see what God and divine intervention look like outside of church. Because there was no denying that I was led to In the Spirit.” Wright’s past had been strictly spiritual from the moment she was born in the small town of Hahira, Ga., the daughter of a preacher.

“You can definitely say that we lived in a quiet house,” Wright says. “My father was very strict, a very militant parent because he wanted us to be very focused kids. He sold the televisions, so we didn’t watch TV. And he didn’t want any music playing that wasn’t gospel or inspirational music. In fact, he didn’t even like a lot of gospel, because he thought it was too bluesy.”

Wright did, however, have ample opportunities to sing, participating in a gospel trio with her older brother and younger sister at churches where her father preached. But she was also rebellious.

“I wanted to run away from home so many times,” she recalls. “I even had teachers who were worried about me because I was so angry with him -- for years.”

All that began to change when she went away to college at the age of 18. She eventually reconciled with her father -- and discovered the appeal of jazz. The story could have ended there, another music business tale from the boondocks. But then it took an unexpected turn. The “guy” who brought Wright together with In the Spirit was Ron Simblist, a business associate of Goldstein’s wife, who led him to Goldstein.

“He said he was a jazz fanatic,” Goldstein says, “and then proceeded to send me some music on Lizz. I liked it but I thought she wasn’t quite ready. A year later, he was in New York, called and asked if I’d listen to another demo he’d made with Lizz.... Well, I listened to one song, maybe less, and said, ‘OK, we’re going to make a deal.’ ”

Spreading the word

Wright’s first recording now in the can, Verve will begin ramping up the promotional machine during the next months as the company publicists, manager Burgess and a still-to-be-hired “lifestyle marketing company” begin to spread the word, the music and the image of a potential new star.

Fully aware of the coming promotional blitz, Wright is already looking into the next stage of her creative quest.

“Lately,” she says, “I’ve really been captivated by folk music and the potential of lyrics. I don’t think words always lead to meaning, but the things you can create with them are still pretty amazing. I’ve been really into Joni Mitchell, for example, but I’ve also been into some studio stuff, like Bjork.

“I feel like I’m traveling and I’m learning more about myself by just spreading out a little bit. It’s kind of weird to be in front of the light while I’m doing all this. But I can’t even tell you that I’ve really found myself yet. I really just want to continue to keep learning more music,” she says. “I want to maintain my spirituality, and I want to be in an environment where I can grow. If I can have those things, everything else will take care of itself.”

Finishing up the conversation, Wright softly sings a few lines from another of her songs, “Salt”:

Just like the salt that’s in the stew

It’s all a part of you

One thing that life can’t do

It can’t take your song from you.

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An eclectic ear

Intellectually omnivorous might be the best way to describe Lizz Wright as she reaches out to gather new artistic experiences. Here are a few of her old favorites and recent discoveries:

Joni Mitchell

“Her voice is so clear it’s almost pointed. And there’s something about the way she tells a story -- very honest, and she’s not a pleaser. There’s something that’s so right about her I’m not even sure what it is yet.”

Bjork

“I can’t put my finger on her. And I like that. I like it because she’s so rare, and she’s such a strange bird. And whatever she does is really her, just like Joni.”

Norma Winstone and Nick Drake

“When it comes to songs, I loved the lyrics that English singer Norma Winstone did for some Fred Hersch tunes. And Nick Drake -- he’s amazing, the way he lets the lyric be in control of the melody. I love his song “River Man.”

Arvo Part

“Arvo Part, the Estonian composer, is someone I’ve just discovered through a friend of mine who played Part’s CD “I Am the True Vine” for me. I love his choral music, probably because of my own background.”

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In concert

Who: Lizz Wright

Where: Cerritos Center, 12700 Center Court Drive, Cerritos

When: Monday, 8 p.m.

Contact: (562) 916-8501