Gray’s colorful voice takes chances and wins

Kellye Gray: it’s not an especially familiar name. Certainly not as familiar as it should be, based on the adventurous singer’s performance Thursday at the Vic in Santa Monica. Listening to the extraordinary musicality that permeated her eclectic opening set, one could only wonder why Gray isn’t recording for a major label.

Or maybe not. Maybe vocal adventuring is not what major labels are looking for in jazz singers these days. Maybe Gray’s combination of stunning scat singing, instrumental simulations and dark-toned balladry doesn’t fit into the Diana Krall and Norah Jones templates of what makes a successful jazz or jazz-tinged vocalist.

If so, that’s a shame. The Austin, Texas-based singer (who lived in Los Angeles for a few years earlier this decade) offered a set clearly demonstrating that jazz singing can stretch the envelope of creativity without sacrificing a direct connection with an audience.

She sang Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “If You Never Come to Me” (“Inutil Paisagem”) with exquisite sensitivity, then shifted gears into a trumpet simulation for Miles Davis’ “All Blues.” A tender but emotionally focused rendering of Sting’s “Fragile” followed, after which Gray responded to a request with a spontaneous version of Charlie Parker’s “Billy’s Bounce,” singing the loping, bebop line at a high-speed pace. Later in the set she did Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” followed by yet another searing up-tempo set of scat choruses, this time on Parker’s “Confirmation.”

That’s an impressively diverse set of music for any singer to handle, but Gray did much more. She made the tunes her own, using the variable tonal qualities of her voice, her unerringly accurate ear, her brisk sense of swing and a desire to take chances to go for something new rather than accept something easy. Sometimes she tripped. More often she revealed the still available, too rarely discovered, potential for inventive creativity in jazz vocalizing.