A Brilliant, Badass, Inventive Debut Album by Jazz Singer Joanna Berkebile

Every year, this blog receives scores of albums by jazz singers. Most of them are women, and most of those are in their fifties or older. These records, most of them available on cd, seem to be audio resumes, something a veteran of restaurant and bar gigs can use to get more of the same, or to sell there as souvenirs. Very few of them contain any originals. Fewer still hold up to repeated listening.

Once in awhile there’s a blast of fresh air from a younger singer like the Swingaroos’ Kimberly Hawkey, or polymath Champian Fulton, or the badass Brianna Thomas, who’s in a class by herself. So it’s refreshing to see Kansas City-based singer Joanna Berkebile come right out of the chute swinging with her debut album Love Me or Leave Me, streaming at Soundcloud. She’s firing on all cylinders. She has a badass sense of humor, she sings in character with a strong, mutable, vintage soul-infused soprano, she has great taste in songs and an equally inspired band behind her. Pianist Leslie Maclean gets credit for the inventive arrangements, with Tim Brewer on bass and Jerry Pollock on drums.

This is also a remarkably upbeat, energetic album. A couple of klezmer-inspired tunes are among the strongest. The first is the opening track, Blossom Dearie’s The Gentleman Is a Dope, done as straight-up swing with a devious bit of a tempo change and a purposeful bass solo, i.e. the good kind, plus a subtly glittering crescendo from Maclean before the last chorus. Berkebile starts out brassy but shifts toward poignancy as the song grows more complicated. This version should be required listening for any woman eating her heart out over some unattainable dude.

The other is Comes Love, which Berkebile and the band do as a spacious midtempo clave tune with a wry matter-of-factness that echoes the song’s roots. They reinvent Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby by ramping up the carnivalesque, Cab Calloway hi-de-ho factor, something she goes even deeper into in Temptation. The late Amy Winehouse couldn’t touch the noir smolder Berkebile channels here.

Likewise, Berkebile ramps up the revenge in Goody Goody, Maclean adding ragtime flair, bass and drums hinting at vindictive vaudeville. She pulls back, but just a little in the brisk, defiant title track, complete with soaring, triumphant scatting solo and some ridiculously funny moments from the rhythm section.

Although Berkebile’s take of Mean to Me has an undercurrent of exasperation, the band have just as much devious fun with it. Maclean’s glimmering, emphatic chords propel My Last Affair, Berkebile’s most dynamically bristling number here.

The album’s most expansive track is a stunningly moody, modally-tinged version of Peel Me a Grape, Berkebile relishing her insatiable narrator’s litany of demands. For those whose taste in vocal jazz runs to demure coquetry, this is not it. But for those who like their singers on the fearless and indominatible side, Berkebile is someone to keep your eye on.

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Champian Fulton Reinvents Charlie Parker with Her Usual Purist Style and Sense of Humor

Champian Fulton made a mark as a purist, Dinah Washington-influenced singer while still in her teens, but in the years since she’s developed piano chops to match that erudite sensibility. There is no other artist in jazz with as much mastery of both the mic and the 88s. Until the lockdown, she maintained a punishing tour schedule, continuing to release albums at a steady clip. Her latest one, Birdsong – a celebration of the Charlie Parker centennial, streaming at Bandcamp – is a logical step in the career of an artist who approaches jazz as entertainment and never stops pushing herself. It’s a mix of vocal and instrumental numbers, more of them associated with Bird than actual Parker compositions.

As usual, Fulton takes a painterly approach, parsing the lyrics line by line. The take of Just Friends, shifting subtly from a jazz waltz to balmy swing, is a good choice of opener. As silky and expressive as her vocals are, her jaunty Errol Garner-ish piano solo is even more adrenalizing.

Fulton chooses her accomplices well. With his smoky tone and uncluttered melodicism, tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton is a perfect fit, and Fulton’s longtime rhythm section of bassist Hide Tanaka and drummer Fukushi Tainaka (no relation) provide an aptly spring-loaded, low-key groove.

Her trumpeter dad Stephen Fulton harmonizes and then offers a mix of carbonation and restraint in a tightly bouncing version of Yardbird Suite. Hamilton matches the frontwoman’s balmy vocals in This Is Always; her droll ornamentation at the keys is irresistibly funny.

Star Eyes is a vehicle for Fulton’s command of a familiar Washington trope, going from mist to bite in barely the space of a syllable. The brightly swinging piano trio version of Quasimodo captures the bandleader in a particularly determined mood and gives the rhythm section a chance to stretch out. Then the three pick up the pace with a breakneck instrumental take of All God’s Chillun Got Rhythm.

Hamilton’s spacious solo makes an apt centerpiece in a midtempo swing version of Dearly Beloved. The decision to approach Out of Nowhere as loose-limbed tropicalia pays off, especially for the rhythm section. The band revert to strolling swing with If I Should Lose You, Hamilton’s most acerbic solo here handing off to the elder Fulton’s Satchmo-influenced lines and a coyly triumphant solo from the younger one.

The best version of My Old Flame may be by Spike Jones: Fulton creates nebulous wee-hours atmosphere with it. The whole band close the record with a comfortably conversational Bluebird. If you like the originals, there’s plenty more entertainment here.

A Dynamic, Intimate Live Album and a Birdland Gig From Jazz Piano and Vocal Siren Champian Fulton

At this point in jazz history,  Champian Fulton is the best piano-playing jazz singer, and the best pianist who happens to be a singer. With her blend of precision and flair on the keys and her nuanced approach to the mic, she’s been unstoppable lately. Her career validates the old proverb that you get good at what you do: somehow, in between gigs, she manages to find the time to make albums. And she likes to flip the script: she’s done everything from reinventing Dinah Washington – a major influence – to a devious all-instrumental piano trio record, and now her latest release, Dream a Little, an intimate but often fiery live set with saxophonist Cory Weeds. The new record, a mix of standards, a couple of rarities and an original is streaming at Bandcamp. Fulton’s next New York gig is a two-night stand at Birdland on Oct 30-31, with sets at 7 and 10 PM; you can get in for $20.

Weeds opens the first track, Dream a Little Dream, with a balmy solo before Fulton’s piano brings in some James P. Johnson gravitas, a contrast that lingers through an unexpectedly restrained, even suspenseful take of a song that Mama Cass Elliott made epic drama out of.

Weeds does the flying – gently – in Fly Me to the Moon, the two folllowing the same dynamic, both Fulton’s piano and voice infused with calm take-charge attitude. Strap on that seat belt, buster!

By contrast, Lullaby For Art  is a starkly pulsing, latin-tinged instrumental theme with bitingly bluesy solos from both musicians. Fulton’s clenched-teeth intensity before the third verse is one of the album’s most stunning moments.

The duo’s take of Darn That Dream has a wistful, expansive solo first verse from Fulton, Weeds fluttering among the clouds, a dynamic they mirror with a steady, subtly stride-influenced version of Pennies From Heaven. Then they pick up the pace with Once I Had a Secret Love, Weeds’ precise chromatic volleys setting the tone.

Fulton’s slowly swaying interpretation of I Thought About You leaves no doubt that it’s about being haunted by a memory. As he does throughout the record, Weeds plays tersely, developing melodic themes rather than blowing endless, too-cool-for-school practice patterns like too many other reed players do.

The two make low-key, striding swing out of Tangerine: Fulton likes to use her low lefthand a lot, and that device works particularly well here, grounding Weeds’ cheery lines. I’d Give a Dollar For a Dime – Joe Williams’ 1930 shout-out to what seemed already had become jukebox nostalgia – dips and weaves with a dreamy charm. They close the record with a coy jump blues take based on Eddie Lockjaw Davis’ version of Save Your Love For Me

While this is first and foremost a collection of bittersweet love ballads, it’s also uproariously funny when least expected: Fulton has a subtle and often sly sense of humor, particularly on the keys. As if we need yet more proof that more artists should be making live records, this is it.

Champian Fulton Fuels the Fun with an All-Star Cast This July 3 at Lincoln Center

Beyond sheer entertainment, the point of the Sisterhood of Swing Seven show at Lincoln Center’s Midsummer Night Swing series this July 3 is to create a septet supergroup of some of the foremost women instrumentalists in jazz. That they chose Champian Fulton as the pianist is hardly a surprise. But they could just as easily have chosen her to be the singer. The rest of the group also has fearsome chops: Catherine Russell on vocals; Camille Thurman (another rarity, a first-rate singer and instrumentalist) on tenor sax; Emily Asher on trombone; Endea Owens on bass; Shirazette Tinnin on drums, and Molly Ryan on guitar. Showtime is 7:30 PM (you can show up for a dance lesson earlier if you want), it’s free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor.

Fulton considers her latest album, the lavish two-disc set The Stylings of Champian Fulton (streaming at Spotify) to be the high point of her recording career so far. With her longtime rhythm section, Hide Tanaka on bass and Fukushi Tainaka  (no relation) on drums, she brings her signature, subtle, stinging wit and sense of surprise to enliven a collection of familiar standards. Vocally, Dinah Washington (an artist she paid tribute to with her After Dark album) is the obvious influence), but Fulton’s range reaches both the calmer and sharper edges of where Washington would typically go.

There’s mist in Fulton’s voice on the opening track, Day by Day – but it’s the mist off a kettle on the stove. As with many of the songs, Fulton’s dad Stephen Fulton adds an amiable flugelhorn solo; his daughter’s rugged chordal intensity afterward is a typically counterintuitive move for her.

She takes the first verse of Lollipops and Roses solo, dead-serious, then the bass and drums kick in and the trio romp through to the end. The full quartet reinvent I Only Have Eyes For You as a deviously chuffing march and then swing it hard. The instrumental Blues Etude has an even more careening intensity; after that, they rein it in just a bit with I Didn’t Know What Time It Was, lit up by Fulton’s bluesy charm on the keys and contrastingly incisive vocals.

The elder Fulton’s ebullientce filters through the album’s second instrumental, Rodeo; the younger one plays with as much devious bluesiness as anywhere else on the record. She takes a similar purist approach to Darn that Dream, but at half the speed, with a more coyly exploratory touch.

Borrowing a more upbeat love song from the past, Too Marvelous For Words perfectly crystallizes what she’s all about: matter-of-fact, unselfconsciously adrenalizing crescendos matched to vocal nuance. The first cd winds up with a brief, balmy bass-and-vocal take of Body and Soul, .

The second record kicks off with a Isn’t It a Lovely Day, the bandleader catching the subtle irony in the lyrics but then contrasting with a cheerily crescendoing piano solo. The band scrambles frantically behind her casually brassy vocal in a lickety-split version You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To – it’s doubtful if anybody’s ever done it so fast, or with a Chopin riff tossed into the piano solo. In context, the feral, jungly drum solo is the icing on the cake.

The instrumental Martha’s Prize has a brisk, incisive, latin-tinged swing. She does the country-flavored Lonesome and Sorry as a jazz waltz, while All the Things You Are swings through a leapfrogging drum break to a fiery latin vamp out. On one hand, all this is as retro as it gets. On the other, Fulton’s knowing vocals and improvisational flair are as cutting-edge as anything happening in the avant garde. To paraphrase JD Allen,, sometimes the most radical thing you can do these days is swing.

Top Tier Talent Celebrate Women in Jazz Out Back of Lincoln Center

This July 3 at 7:30 PM, for the second year in a row, there’s a celebration of women in jazz at Lincoln Center’s Midsummer Night Swing series in Damrosch Park. The lineup last year was kiler and so is this year’s slightly smaller crew. The Sisterhood of Swing Seven get their name from the pioneering all-female swing group from the 1930s. Singer Catherine Russell fronts this year’s allstar septet, with Camille Thurman on tenor sax; Emily Asher on trombone; Endea Owens on bass; Shirazette Tinnin on drums; Champian Fulton on piano and Molly Ryan on guitar. It’s free to get into the park, $18 in advance for the dancefloor

Last year’s lineup had some association with this era’s foremost all-female big band, the Diva Jazz Orchestra, whose brilliantly melodic 25th Anniversary Project album is streaming at their music page. The orchestrations are as majestic as the bandname: A handful of the tunes are pretty straight-up swing, although most of the record is considerably more ambitious. The lineup includes Erica von Kleist and Janelle Reichman on tenor sax; Mercedes Beckman and Alexa Tarantino on alto; Leigh Pilzer on baritone sax and bass clarinet; Rachel Therrien, Barbara Laronga, Jami Dauber and Liesl Whitaker on trumpets; Leslie Havens on bass trombone; Sara Jacovino and Jennifer Krupa on trombones; Tomoko Ohno on piano; Noriko Ueda on bass and bandleader Sherrie Maricle on drums.

The first track, East Coast Andy is brassy and bluesy, with some coy pairings on the low end and a long solo from Pilzer’s baritone. Middleground follows an upward trajectory from a strikingly brooding, subtly polyrhythmic first section, to a precise but unsettled Ohno piano solo and then Reichman’s clarinet carrying a much brighter theme skyward.

Seesaw, a latin-tinged jazz waltz, has devious ornamentation, built around Tarantino’s crystalline, perfectly modulated soprano sax. Jami’s Tune is a blazing, catchy hot 20s-style theme with a jaunty two-trumpet conversation. Mighty, sustained brass phrases interchange over Maricle’s low-key, syncopated clave in Square One, trumpet and alto sax trading off at midpoint.

Beyond the allusive modal vamp at the center, Darkness of the Matter at first doesn’t hint it’s going in that direction, but after a bubbling trombone feature, Reichman’s tenor sax brings in the clouds with some bracing echo effects. Dancing clarinet and piano introduce the quasi-Brazilian bluster of La Americana, a launching pad for a cheery clarinet solo from Reichman.

A Quarter Past the Last Minute has a hi-de-ho swing flair, with a muted trumpet solo like blues from the hall of the mountain king ,plus some ridiculously funny trombone moments. Forever in My Heart is the album’s lone ballad and most lustrously lingering cut, with lyrical trumpet, whispery bass and glimmering piano solos. The final number is the briskly charging, dixieland-flavored The Rhythm Changes.

This group have come a long way since the evening in the fall of 1999 when a future blog owner saw all eighteen members of the orchestra line up in three tiers, packed in as close as a band can be, on the little stage of a long-gone East Village boite, the C-Note. Space may have been tight that night, but so were the Diva Jazz Orchestra. Plus ça change…

Lincoln Center’s 2018 Midsummer Night Swing Series Opens With Potent Relevance and Breathtaking Musicianship

At the risk of getting into serious trouble saying this, there hasn’t been such a stunning display of jazz talent on any New York stage this year as there was last night at the kickoff of Lincoln Center’s annual Midsummer Night Swing festival. The inspiration for the mighty big band, the Sisterhood of Swing, was the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, the first integrated, all-female swing group, who debuted eighty-one years ago. As bandleader, trumpeter and singer Bria Skonberg took care to remind the audience who packed Damrosch Park, those women risked their lives playing music together.

The members of this group weren’t risking their lives, but arguably the majority of them were out of their element. And few among this allstar cast play regularly with large ensembles, fewer still with a group the size of this one. The majority are bandleaders who play their own material rather than bouncy 1930s swing. Yet everybody seemed to be pretty much jumping out of their shoes to be involved in this project.

In two lengthy, hard-swinging sets that spanned from standards to cult favorites and an obscure gem or two, the fourteen-piece ensemble offered tantalizing glimpses of pretty much each member’s personality, yet in a completely different context considering where they’re usually found.

The audience responded most explosively to tenor saxophonist and singer Camille Thurman’s serpentine climb to the vocal stratosphere in one of the night’s few ballads, quite a contrast with her rapidfire scatting in a Benny Goodman diptych during the first set. Another big hit was tapdancer Michela Lerman’s nimble solo over Savannah Harris’ irrepressibly boisterous, tropically-tinged tom-tom syncopation, mirroring the drummer’s rambunctious drive in the second set’s opening number, Lady Be Good.

At the piano, Champian Fulton delivered purist, masterfully spacious, blues-drenched lines that fit the material perfectly, especially when the band threw her what could have been the night’s longest solo. In her first turn on the mic, she projected with a surprisingly steely intensity, then a second time around worked knowingly triumphant, bluesy, Dinah Washington-inspired melismas.

Lead trumpeter Jami Dauber joined with her brassy bandmate Linda Briceño and Skonberg as well in a wildly crescendoing, tightly spinning exchange in the wryly titled Battle of the Bugles, one of a handful of numbers from the catalog of Sweethearts of Swing creators Kat Sherrell and Natalie Wilson. Bassist Endea Owens benefited from excellent amplification, giving her a forceful presence. Chloe Feoranzo stood out most noticeably with her gritty baritone sax work; trombonist and singer Emily Asher also got time in the spotlight to channel some goodnaturedly wry humor. Lead alto saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin played punchy soul alongside her fellow reedwomen Thurman and Sharel Cassity.

On clarinet, Anat Cohen spun silky arpeggios on the less breathlessly pulsing numbers and delivered joyously dancing dixieland when the pace picked up, notably alongside violinist Regina Carter in A Woman’s Place Is in the Groove, a deliriously frantic obscurity by 1930s vioinist Ginger Smock. The two worked more calmly and majestically in a new instrumental arrangement of My Baby Just Cares for Me. The group closed with a joyously edgy take of the klezmer-tinged romp Doin’ the Uptown Lowdown, made famous by Mildred Bailey with the Tommy Dorsey band. The crowd didn’t want to let the band go after discovering this new sensation.

This year’s Midsummer Night Swing series continues through July 14 with a more eclectic series of dance bands than ever. Tomorrow at 7:30 PM it’s salsa pioneer and “El Rey de la Pachanga” Joe Quijano y Su Conjunto Cachana. It’ll cost you $17 to get out on the dance floor, something an awful lot of people last night were doing.

This Year’s Midsummer Night Swing Festival Kicks Off on a Powerfully Relevant Note

Midsummer Night Swing is a New York rite of passage. Everybody does it at one time or another. It’s hard to think of a more romantic date night. Every year starting at the end of June, Lincoln Center rolls out a real dancefloor at the southwestern corner of the campus in Damrosch Park, where an eclectic series of bands serenade the dancers with everything from 30s big band swing to 20s hot jazz, salsa dura, and this year, even classic honkytonk. Not everybody dances; lots of folks just come out for the music, or to watch the spectacle. By Manhattan jazz club standards, admission is a real bargain at $17, and there are deals if you go to multiple shows, as many people do.

This Tuesday, June 26 at 7:30 PM is kickoff night with a monster all-female band assembled by Lincoln Center specially for this occasion. They take their inspiration from the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, the first integrated, all-female swing group. Trumpeter Bria Skonberg leads this multi-generational mix of allstar and rising star talent, which features Regina Carter on violin, Anat Cohen on clarinet and Champian Fulton on piano with Lakecia Benjamin, Sharel Cassity, Chloe Feoranzo, and Camille Thurman on saxes; Emily Asher on trombone; Linda Briceño and Jami Dauber also on trumpets; Endea Owens on bass and Savannah Harris on drums.

If you’re going there to listen, who among these artists should you single out? Pretty much all have them have gotten some ink here at one point or another. One of the most obvious choices is Anat Cohen, who turned in what was arguably the most riveting performance at last year’s Charlie Parker Festival with her epic, often hauntingly mysterious, klezmer-influenced tentet, testifying to her prowess in a big band setting.

On one hand, her latest album, Live in Healdsburg – streaming at Spotify and recorded in California a couple of years ago – is 180 degrees from that, a duo performance with the similarly lyrical Fred Hersch on piano. Yet in its own way, it’s just as lavish, an expansive, warmly conversational, vivid and unselfconsciously joyous collaboration.

Hersch opens the night’s first track, the aptly titled A Lark, with impressionistic, Debussy-esque belltones before Cohen gently dances in and then all of a sudden it’s a surreal update on ragtime. The push-pull between Cohen’s voice of reason and Hersch’s trickster is irresistibly fun, especially when the two switch roles and Cohen goes spiraling. Neither have ever glistened more than they do here.

Another Hersch number, Child’s Song is both more spaciously tender and tropical, giving Cohen a launching pad for her terse, crystalline, often balletesque lines, especially when Hersch mutes his insistent, pointillistic approach. Hersch begins the first Cohen tune here, The Purple Piece with a brooding austerity: it’s as far from over-the-top as you can get. Cohen maintains the bluesy bittersweetness with her aching melismas over an understated waltz rhythm, Hersch grounding it with his expressive neoromantic chords and occasional, more incisive shifts.

As they do with many of the songs here, they build from opacity to an understated swing and then playful, experimentation in a pretty radical remake of Isfahan. Then in in the last of the Hersch pieces, Lee’s Dream, they jump out of their shoes gracefully over a precise, distantly stride-influenced piano drive that bookends a flutteringly disorienting interlude.

From Hersch’s phantasmagorical intro to Cohen’s similarly canivalesque shifts between wistful blues and eerie microtones, the album’s most lavish number could be characterized as a haunting improvisation loosely based on Jimmy Rowles’ The Peacocks. Their approach to Fats Waller’s Jitterbug Waltz is similar if somewhat more flitting. They encore with a similarly individualistic version of Mood Indigo, Cohen’s low, meticulously somber approach lightened somewhat by Hersch’s spare, steady, glimmering architecture. There could be plenty of moments like this from a completely different crew on Tuesday night in the park.

A Rare Christmas Album That’s Not Cloying and Annoying

Christmas music rots your brain. It’s true! Scientific studies have confirmed what most of us have known all along. No wonder, considering how repetitive, unsophisticated and utterly lacking in dynamics most Christmas songs are.

Into this musical wasteland swings Champian Fulton, one of the great wits in jazz, with her irresistible and stunningly dynamic new album Christmas With Champian, streaming at Spotify. There hasn’t been a Christmas record this fun or this subtly irreverent since dub reggae band Super Hi-Fi’s two woozy instrumental albums of “holiday favorites.”

Fulton is the best singing pianist in jazz. There isn’t another instrumentalist out there with her mic skills, nor a singer with her fearsome chops at the keys. More than anything else, this is a great jazz record in a Santa hat. Fulton never ceases to find both poignancy and exuberant fun in the least expected places. For the latter, check out how she Sarah Vaughns White Christmas, the album’s opening track. Better watch out if you don’t want that snow, because Fulton sounds like she might smack you upside the head! It’s a good guess that Irving Berlin, who cut his teeth in ragtime, would approve of this jaunty, bluesy arrangement.

Fulton’s take of Pretty Paper, recast as a brisk jazz waltz, has to be the saddest version of the song ever recorded. That vendor girl, out there in the cold with all that merch she has to unload before the 25th of the month or she loses all her money! Likewise, the solo piano-and-vocal version of I’ll Be Home for Christmas is balmy and plaintive: when Fulton hits the end of the chorus, “if only in my dreams” packs a wallop.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland gets reinvented as wry viper swing, with some coyly emphatic trumpet from her dad, Stephen Fulton, who also lights up a carefully articulated version of Gracias a Dios. She sings that one in Spanish, hardly a stretch considering her Mexican heritage – and the point where she follows her dad’s solo with a deadpan jinglebell solo of her own is subtly priceless. Drummer Fukushi Tainaka’s elegant brushwork and David Williams’ terse bass add subtle bolero hints.

The Christmas Song – better known as Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire – is one of only a couple of tracks here with a genuine jazz pedigree, but Fulton goes for devious, tongue-in-cheek humor rather than trying to follow in Nat Cole’s footsteps.  She reinvents Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas as midtempo swing, with hints of Dinah Washington and an unexpectedly dark intro that edges toward barrelhouse.

Daughter and father team up to remake Christmas Time Is Here as a bittersweet, lustrous, languidly tropical instrumental ballad. Likewise, she transforms A Child Is Born into a bluesy waltz, with a melismatic, insistent bass solo. Her piano solo in a wee-hours take of The Christmas Waltz goes in the opposite direction, with enough droll ornamentation for a fifty-foot tree.

Her version of Sleigh Ride pairs a boisterous trumpet solo with an unexpectedly seductive vocal and teasingly allusive piano, an approach she revisits in Let It Snow. The Dinah-inspired piano-and-vocal final number, Merry Merry Christmas, is the only Fulton original here, but could easily date from sixty years ago – and might make it to your local supermarket someday.

Entertainment and Formidable Piano Chops at an Unexpectedly Contemplative Spot with Champian Fulton

Champian Fulton brings a rare blend of daunting piano and vocal chops to the final nights of her indian summer Radegast Hall residency this Sept 18 at 8 PM. She’s also here on the 25th. Either way, it’s Monday, and it’s professional night, and while you might not expect people to come to listen, they do. Remember, every bar on a Monday could be the best bar in town.

Fulton’s latest album is The Things We Did Last Summer, a collaboration with suave tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton recorded live onstage in Spain last year and streaming at Spotify. It’s a mix of instrumental and vocal numbers, and despite the fact that it’s mostly standards, it’s arguably the high point of Fulton’s career so far. She makes solid studio albums – her all-instrumental collection, Speechless, is a party in a box – but both co-leaders do their best work onstage. More artists – particularly players who can improvise at the level the band reaches here – should be making live records.

Fulton’s subtle, tantalizingly melismatic vocals and entertaining stage presence are what she’s best known for, but she’s also a hell of a pianist. To open the album, she brings a moody been-there, done-that, know-your-pain feel to When Your Lover Has Gone, contrasting with a spacious, playfully jaunty, ragtime-tinged piano solo. Hamilton brings in the mist from there; Fulton really works the blue notes at the end.

The ten-plus minute take of Basie’s Black Velvet is a classic example of the kind of extended excursion Fulton excels at when the night is winding down, but she’s not ready to call it quits. Bassist Ignasi Gonzalez and drummer Esteve Pi settle into a comfortable midtempo stroll as Fulton winds her way up from gimlet-eye glimmer toward jubilation, Hamilton echoing her as he takes the long way in through the fog.

Fulton gets back on the mic with a barely restrained vengefulness for I Cried for You, which the band takes scampering, Gonzalez’ wry, brisk bass ballet contrasting with Fulton’s clenched-teeth attack on the keys. There’s a Sarah Vaughan-ish told-your-so quality to the vocals, but it’s not derivative.

The album’s instrumental title track brings back the wee-hours serenity, Hamilton plush and balmy over Fulton’s lingering phrases. Then the two offer contrast, floating sax against Fulton’s lowdown bluesy vocals and joyous staccato piano in Too Marvelous For Words.

Allusive, understated bluesy angst pervades an expansive vocal take of My Future Just Passed, this one closer to the Shirley Horn version. Then the band picks up the pace with the hot jazz standard Running Wild before going back to the “Great American Songbook” for a lush excursion through The Very Thought of You, Fulton ending the night with misty suspense that Hamilton works for all it’s worth before her fingers finally bust it through the clouds. It’s a good bet she’ll do something a lot like this during the Williamsburg stand.

For those in Jersey, she’s also at the Gruin Center for the Arts on College Drive on the Ocean County College campus in Toms River on Sept 19 at 8; tix are $24/$20 srs.

A Rare Brooklyn Residency By the Best Singing Pianist in Jazz

Lately there’s been a lot of top-drawer jazz popping up in some unexpected places. When Bar Lunatico in Bed-Stuy booked the Jazz Passengers for a weekly residency, that sent a signal. Likewise, the cavernous Williamsburg beer garden Radegast Hall books many of this city’s best swing bands, but it’s not known as a listening room – and if you’ve witnessed the din there on the weekend, you know why. But that’s not always the case.

This September, the venue has booked pianist/singer/composer Champian Fulton for a Monday night, 8 PM weekly residency that resumes September 18. If you’re a serious jazz fan and you’re on a budget – the venue doesn’t charge a cover – you’d be crazy to miss this. If Manhattan is easier for you, she’s also at Smoke on Sept 7 with sets at 7:30, 9 and 10:30. 

Watching her figure out where she was going to go, in a spit-second, pensive smile on her face a couple of weeks ago at her first night at the Brooklyn venue was great fun – and a revelation. Fulton is known as a singer. Dinah Washington is the obvious influence – Fulton’s 2016 album After Dark got a big thumbs-up here, as did her 2017 all-instrumental release, Speechless. The former is a subtle reinterpretation of songs that other chanteuses tend to mimic rather than putting their own stamp on. But while nuance is what distinguishes Fulton’s vocals, she’s got fire in her fingers. Not to disrespect Diana Krall’s piano chops, and Karrin Allyson is a much better pianist than she typically lets on, but there’s no other singer in jazz with chops as fast and fluid as Fulton’s  Nor is there a pianist with her speed and prowess who’s equally gifted on the mic.

Through almost a full two sets, she only played one instrumental, a percolating postbop shuffle to open the night – understandable considering that most of the acts here have vocalists. The rest of the set was mostly standards, which also makes sense considering where she was. It was what Fulton did with them that separates her from thousands and thousands of loungey acts around the world. For example, was she going to follow that snarkly little curlicue with another devious glissando? Yessssssss. Maybe one more time? Nope. She’d already moved on to a big hammering series of downward chords.

“Every gig is a good gig,” she mused between sets. Confident words – or just the daily routine for one of the great wits in jazz, who makes no secret how much fun she’s having onstage. Her rhythm section shuffled and swung tersely and tightly behind her as she made her way through one eclectic intro after another: hard blues into Bessie Smith’s After You’ve Gone, plaintive classical balladry into April in Paris. Then she’d take flight over the entire span of the keyboard, trickly highs to looming lows, slowly building to a crescendo and then back at times. Like her vocals, the musical jokes were subtle, but there were a lot of them, quotes from other tunes as well as unexpected peek-a-boo phrases and more. See for yourself next month.