Has anybody seen and/or heard her?
I'll be away when she plays Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz, CA 01/15/07
Terrible article IMO
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REVIEW
Singer Pyeng Threadgill bridges classic, contemporary jazz with an easy subtlety
- Neva Chonin, Chronicle Critic at Large
Tuesday, July 4, 2006
Subtlety: Jazz and R&B vocalists had it once, before "American Idol" made window-rattling ululations the sound du jour. Drama is a glorious thing in doses, but people, people: Show us you can hold a note, not rattle its brains like a cat with a field mouse.
Pyeng Threadgill, who headlined the Fillmore Jazz Festival's Ellis Street stage Sunday, understands subtlety. From her sensible shoes and swishing pleated skirt to her elegantly measured phrasing, her approach is both pristine and intimate, supported by arrangements that are inventive but not gaudy.
This doesn't make Threadgill conservative. She doesn't emulate the free-jazz experimentation of her father, composer Henry Threadgill, but she does share his stylistic curiosity and willingness to breach genre boundaries. Like her first album of original material (last year's "Of the Air"), Threadgill's Sunday show blended classic and contemporary jazz motifs woven with threads from old spirituals, new and old soul, scat, electro-pop and the blues.
Some artists attempting such hybrids overwhelm their music with overly busy sound collages. Threadgill avoids that pitfall, thanks to her talent for merging iconoclasm and moderation. The result is an eclectic style that sounds deceptively traditional. Sunday's 45-minute set -- played to a mixed crowd on a stage flanked by food stands and frozen lemonade vendors -- capitalized on that casually daring vibe, which proved ideal for a show in front of an audience in sandals.
Whether delivering the folksy jazz on "Before Day" or getting down, coolly, with some percussive vocalizing on the Latin-tinged "It's Late," Threadgill emphasized the eloquence of understatement and precision. Although a little sloppiness would have felt nice on some songs -- a cover of Fats Waller's lovely "Jitterbug Waltz," for instance, begged for an extra serving of sensuality -- more often, Threadgill's crystalline diction served the music well by foregrounding lyrics and imbuing them with fresh, personalized meaning. Her reading of the Cure's "Close to Me" turned Robert Smith's jittery anxiety into warm expectation, even making a line like "If only I was sure that my head on the door was a dream" sound, well, normal. Almost normal. OK, it still sounded insane, but in a sweet way, not like it had a knife under its pillow.
The singer's band -- guitarist Shelley Doty, bassist Lisa Mezzacappa, percussionist/vocalist Micha Patri and trumpet player Henry Hung -- was equally adept at harmonic support and instrumental flourishes. Each musician had ample opportunities to shine: Doty turned in an unexpectedly rocking guitar solo on the moody "Inner Lining"; Hung carried the melody on his horn with Mezzacappa getting funky with her bass during "It's Late"; Patri drove the Caribbean blues of "Ambrosia" with his rhythmic twists. And Threadgill glided over it all, embellishing and interpreting the music with understated grace.
Subtlety. An ad for a classic perfume once suggested the best way to grab a room's attention was to whisper. Threadgill is a classic perfume.
E-mail Neva Chonin at
nchonin@sfchronicle.com.
Linear Mode
