Singer Ellen Johnson’s straightforward crossing

Ellen Johnson approaches jazz singing the old-fashioned way: through the music. She doesn’t try to simulate Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald. She doesn’t add a rapper or a turntablist to her backup group. And she doesn’t look for illusory connections with country music or electronica.

What Johnson does is work with (or write) songs suited to her voice, style and creativity. She taps musicians who are fully in sync with her artistic goals. And she brings it together in a way that connects her listeners with the intrinsic honesty of her interpretations.

All these characteristics were on display Thursday at the Vic in Santa Monica. The performance, coinciding with the release of her new CD, “These Days,” was both a celebration and a showcase for Johnson’s music, with plenty of space allocated to the other artists on the album -- guitarist Larry Koonse, bassist Darek Oles, drummer Roy McCurdy and percussionist and singer Ana Gazzola. And, perhaps most significant, veteran jazz singer Sheila Jordan.

Parts of the CD, in fact, were stimulated by Jordan’s fondness for duetting with string bassists. Johnson opened with some sterling interaction with Oles on “No Moon at All.” Singing as a soloist with only bass accompaniment is a daunting task, potentially exposing strengths as well as weaknesses. There were a few passages in which slightly wavering pitch suggested that Johnson’s monitor speaker wasn’t functioning properly. But her interpretations were right on target, finding the heart of the song, sharing its pulse and flow with Oles’ surging bass lines.

She displayed her stylistic versatility in other material: a jaunty rendering of Charles Mingus’ “Nostalgia in Times Square” with lyrics by Johnson; a sardonic take on Chris Smither’s “I Feel the Same”; a lovely ride through the wordless melody of Ole’s “Inspiration,” recalling the soprano melody of Villa-Lobos’ “Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5.”

The program reached its climax with Jordan’s arrival. She sang Oscar Brown Jr.’s whimsical lyrics for Bobby Timmons’ “Dat Dere” with appropriately childlike inflection, then switched to the dark subtleties of maturity with “You Must Believe in Spring.” This engaging evening concluded with a stunning duet between the two singers in Jordan’s “The Crossing,” a deeply personal revelation, from one who has made the journey, of what it really means to be a jazz singer.