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Tierney Sutton's Desire
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Posted by: editoron Sunday, March 15, 2009 - 11:31 PM |
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By John Stevenson
The quest to present a spiritual or philosophical perspective through the medium of jazz is far from original. The late-period work of John Coltrane, and Duke Ellington’s Sacred Concerts provide two powerful reference points. Lining up selected songs in the Great American Songbook with the sacred texts of the relatively recent Baha’i Faith, however, is a pretty tough one to beat.
That’s precisely what jazz vocalist Tierney Sutton has done on Desire, her brand new Telarc release. By way of eleven jazz standards, she sets out to demonstrate that “material things that we want or desire are not usually a path to happiness, and are not usually a path to ourselves”.
The disc also shows off the dazzling piano accompaniment of Christian Jacob, who almost manages to upstage the proceedings through sheer musical genius, and the ever-reliable acoustic bassists Kevin Axt and Trey Henry, rounded out by Ray Brinker’s imaginative drumming.
The disc open up with Tierney reciting the Baha’i Arabic Hidden Words:
“O SON OF BEING! Busy not thyself with this world, for with fire We test the gold, and with gold We test Our servants”.
She follows this up with a mellow and arresting rendition of “Its Only A Paper Moon”. The quest for materialism is exposed as hollow, set against more lasting and substantial ideals. All of the eleven tracks capture the allure of the material in their own poignant unique ways, including lesser-performed gems such as “Long Daddy Green” and “Whatever Lola Wants”.
It should also be pointed out that Sutton follows in the tradition of Baha’i jazz musicians such as pianist Mike Longo, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, and French horn player, John Clarke.
Did Desire just take a lot of cojones, or was it something that seemed a natural spiritual prompting?
“For me and for the band, juxtaposing the secular and sacred is simply
what we do. For us playing and creating music is essentially a spiritual
enterprise but, of course, we live in a secular world and I’ve never
had any desire to ram my personal spirituality down anyone’s throat. The
decision to use some Baha’i texts on Desire was an organic band
decision that was made over time and felt right and unforced.”
The CD racks in music stores are filled with lots of female jazz vocalists
who show off provocative poses to draw buyers in: Perfected
technique and genuine soulfulness is frequently sacrificed on the altar of
platitudinous pulchritude, and the near-pornographic.
Do female jazz vocalists - and instrumentalists - willingly collude in
this distorted portrayal? Tierney has her own definite views on the subject:
“I’ve had to draw the line several times with my label about covers. A few times they have wanted to use photos that I felt were too suggestive. Fortunately our producer [Telarc’s Elaine Martone] has always been sensitive enough to go with my wishes. Part of the reason I wanted to make this record was this problem in our culture. This is just another manifestation of materialism.”
The Berklee School of Music graduate says she is constantly on the hunt for standards that strongly resonate with her audiences, and which reflect great beauty as well. She says:
“We are always on the lookout for what I call ‘DNA’ songs. This means songs that are part of the ‘DNA’ of many listeners, such as “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead” or “Whatever Lola Wants”. With songs like these, the band can relax and create to the outer limits because there is a foundation in the minds of the audience that tells them what the theme means. Songs like this are a lot of fun to work with. But of course we also look for songs with great beauty - at times it’s a beauty that we feel we can illuminate in a new way “Its Only A Paper Moon” and at other times we just want to introduce a lesser known song “Long Daddy Green”
Ms Sutton’s interpretation of the Hoagy Carmichael/Johnny Mercer composition, “Skylark”, is particularly haunting. Carmichael wrote the composition as a musical memorial to his friend Bix Beiderbecke.
She also thinks the current state of the craft of jazz song-smithing is in good nick:
“There are so many composers out there and there are many doing some good work. I get songs submitted constantly. The tricky part is finding a song that can stand up next to ‘Skylark’. Not easy.”
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