A rising star of the jazz cosmos ... at 51
Annabelle McDonald
28jul06
NEW York jazz singer Lisa Sokolov may be 51 years old, but the mother of two takes no offence to being called a rising star.
The performer, professor, music therapist and Jewish ritual singer was last year praised in the US as one of jazz's top up-and-coming singers. But that had nothing to do with her image or the help of mainstream record companies, she said.
"To be named a rising star at 51, that's a long rise," said the woman who performed her first gig when she was 19.
"Am I competing with Britney Spears? Not on any cosmic plain whatsoever. I am against absolute, total odds," she said, laughing alongside her 60-year-old double bass player Cameron Brown. "I do this because I am an obstinate fool, not because the world has in any way said 'Come on, do it'. Even in the jazz world, I am not young and fabulous-looking - record companies will not deal with me."
Brown said Sokolov had worked hard for her success.
"Even in the jazz world, which is this tiny, tiny sliver of the gross national product of rock'n'roll, still an awful lot of the singers have to be young, have to be pretty. Even here, capitalism is trying to wipe out creativity."
The pair are in Queensland this week, on Sokolov's first trip to the southern hemisphere, to perform two shows for the Brisbane Festival's Spiegeltent, before heading to Byron Bay via Lismore.
Although starting off as a classically trained pianist, Sokolov has developed a reputation as the wild woman of jazz and a central figure of Manhattan's avant-garde jazz scene.
Sokolov has also taken up cantoring - ritual singing in a synagogue - despite never going to synagogue when she was growing up. When one day she was asked to cantor by a rabbi with whom she "completely saw eye to eye about the nature of the cosmos", she said yes.
"Music is always a sacred act, but when you get to do a service like that, it is so unadulterated a sacred act, you don't have to pretend it is anything else."
Sokolov will perform tonight and tomorrow at Brisbane's Spiegeltent
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