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| Jazz Vocal at Jazz at Pearl's This Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, August 25-27, spirited vocalese hipster Giacomo Gates comes to San Francisco's Jazz At Pearl's. Next Thursday night, it's cabaret chanteuse Terese Genecco setting up shop with a jazz version of her acclaimed show, "Drunk With Love: A Tribute to Francis Faye." And Pearl's opens September with a weekend residence with sassy blues and jazz diva Kim Nalley, Friday - Sunday, September 1-3. Giacomo Gates is a unique, powerful jazz singer, heavily steeped in the traditions of vocal improvisers from Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald through their modern counterparts, Betty Carter and Leon Thomas. While Gates' approach draws most heavily from the bebop-rooted masters like Jon Hendricks and, most of all, Eddie Jefferson, like those artists, Gates has forged a path of his own. Giacomo Gates is a student of the music's great legacy, a fascination that seeps out of his performances. And Gates' warm, rhythmically challenging delivery is fueled by nuances of experience and emotion that come from his fascinating and unique life story. Gates didn't begin singing in front of audiences until age 40. Before that, he'd lived a working class life, including 14 years in Alaska, driving trucks doing road construction and working on the Alaska pipeline. He always had a love of music, though, and he began performing in the late 80's. Encouraged by the musicians around him, and especially by late jazz writer Grover Sales, who saw Gates perform at a workshop, Gates finally returned to his native Connecticut in 1988 to focus on music full time. Since then, Gates' career has blossomed, and he's played major U.S. clubs, New York's Birdland, the Five Spot and the Jazz Standard, Philadelphia's Zanzibar Blue, Blues Alley in D.C. and Snug Harbor in New Orleans, and a long list of festivals across the U.S, touring Europe as well. Add three popular CDs to the resume, as well. For Gates' Pearl's dates, his band will include trombonist John Gove (Friday and Sunday only), pianist Ben Flint, bassist Aaron Germaine and drummer Jeff Marrs. Terese Genecco came to prominence on the Bay Area music scene when she won Entertainer of the Year honors at the 2003 San Francisco Cabaret Competition. The fan-pleasing Genecco was soon a hit with nightclub audiences in the Bay Area and New York City alike. In 2005 she debuted her solo show, "Drunk with Love: A Tribute to Frances Faye" during a five-week run at San Francisco's New Conservatory Theatre. She now regularly plays high-profile venues in the Bay Area and New York, including the Plush Room and the ODC Theater in San Francisco, and Jazz@Lincoln Center, the Iridium, and the Metropolitan Room in New York. Frances Faye was a fabulous, feisty nightclub/saloon singer who hit her peak in the late thirties in New York's swankiest supper clubs, and played to sold out crowds all over the world through the seventies, and was known as the Rat Pack's favorite nightclub singer. Genecco's pleasing style makes her just the performer to do justice to the music and legacy of this cherished, one-of-a-kind legend. Genecco brings a high-energy jazz-concert version of "Drunk With Love" to Pearl's on August 31, backed by a swinging 8-piece ensemble, as she explores the improvisational, jazz dimension of the great songs that the indomitable Frances Faye made her own. Singer Kim Nalley's appearances onstage at Jazz at Pearl's have come to be much anticipated concerts for Bay Area locals and much sought out events for visitors, as well. Nalley combines a lithe, beautiful sound and compelling sense of swing with just enough saucy spark to create an instant and genuine rapport with her audience. What she delivers is a swinging evening of standards in the tradition of Billie Holiday, Joe Williams, Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone. In fact, Kim Nalley topped the success of her 2003 CD, Need My Sugar, with this year's astounding She Put a Spell on Me, her powerful, heartfelt and hugely entertaining tribute to Simone. No secret to the music world at large, Kim Nalley has performed at most of the major Jazz festivals throughout the world, garnering rave reviews along the way, and performed with heavyweights from James Williams, Jimmy McGriff and Billy Higgins to Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony. While Nalley has a semi-regular Tuesday night spot at Pearl's, and commands a large following for her tours across the U.S. and Europe, her weekend tenures in the North Beach nightspot have taken on a special buzz, attracting a happy mix of local jazz hounds and music loving tourists. write your comments about the article :: © 2006 Jazz News :: home page |