Kristine Key - Red Top Jazz

Red Top Jazz signs in.

STUDIO RED TOP PRESENTS JAZZ WOMEN IN CONCERT-At the Villa Victoria Cultural Center, yesterday afternoon (repeated last night).

By Bob Blumenthal.

Guest Critic

Perhaps the most welcome feature of this year’s Jazz Festival is its expanded local base. This involves not only the incorporation of more Boston artists, but also the participation of organizations that have done yeoman work in promoting jazz in this city. Or should we say yeoperson in the case of Studio Red Top Inc., which has provided support over the past decade for the area’s female musicians, several of whom were featured in Sunday’s community concert.

This was not simply another program of jazz women. With the participation of Lisa Thorson, a singer/actress who is confined to a wheelchair and Felice Shays and Jody Steiner, who the program identified as “artistic ASL

(American Sign Language) interpreters,” the event was also the rare jazz presentation geared to the handicapped.

As it turns out, the presence of the ASL interpreters gave the hearing impaired an advantage over those of us who had to dig unfamiliar lyrics out of the mix, as was the case during singer Kristine Key’s set. Not to knock Key’s avoidance of the tried-and-true; her choice of two originals by local writers (Peter Calo’s “It Begins Today” and Erika Luckett’s “Timeless Love”) and two infrequently heard gems (“Devil May Care” and “Harlem Nocturne” ) was one mark of Key’s jazz sensibility.

There was more than tune selection to recommend a performance of Key, who, like Thorson, was given a set of the concert’s specially-assembled quintet. Key has a clear sound, good range, reliable time, and the taste to keep everything under control. If her depiction of paradise on ”Timeless” benefited from Steiner’s signing of ocean waves and the like, no help was required during “Nocturne,” a reading of contained passion that was a concert peak. The only mistake during Key’s appearance was that Cercie Miller, who took torrid alto sax solos elsewhere, had her tenor confined to obbligatos during “Devil.”

Miller’s tenor did find space on the Tom Harrell blues “Terrestris”, which also permitted Shays and Steiner to improvise body movements to Thorson’s lyrics. Thorson sounds like a pop singer in the process of converting to jazz- her time is still rigid and the liberties she takes with the material are more italicized than Key’s. She has a pleasing voice, though, and freshened up her mostly familiar material with imaginative arrangements. Cecelia Smith’s vibes and Ranjana Kumar’s bowed bass provided a compliment for “My Funny Valentine”, while Thorson, Steiner and Miller, (on alto) created a striking tryptich on “Blues in the Night.” Thorson, who has not allowed a serious injury to end her performing career, is a musical pioneer in the use of ASL, and employed both interpreters on two songs.

Each set began with original instrumentals by the quintet members. “First Attempt” made room for composer Kumar’s electric bass and drummer Claire Arenius: Miller’s soprano growled and wailed on her own “Casa China:” and pianist Caroline Ritt’s sure two-handed technique was featured on Smith’s snappish blues “Coming Forth” and Ritt’s own “Smoker.”

Except for the finale “Cottontail,” which was marred by feedback, the afternoon concert went off without a hitch. It was repeated again at 8 p.m., a scheduling policy Studio Red Top will also employ at its March 27 and April 10 concerts at Villa Victoria.

(Bob Blumenthal is a contributing editor of The Boston Phoenix)

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