Jazz CD review: Roberta Donnay, Marin IJ

Donnay pulls jazz up by its roots

Article Launched: 06/23/2006 04:59:00 AM PDT

By Mark Langton
IJ Correspondent

The mark of a good jazz vocalist lies not so much in the ability to take a song apart, but in the ability to put it back together. Anyone can deconstruct an old, historic landmark - all you need is a good bulldozer - but it takes the delicate touch of a gifted mason to reassemble it brick by brick.

With the release of her first all-jazz CD, "What's Your Story?" (2006, Rainforest Records), Mill Valley-based singer Roberta Donnay not only disassembles every song in this collection of mostly classic jazz standards, she shows us the care with which she rejoins each phrase's edge. Like some Cubist carpenter, this petite, firebrand vocalist methodically reduces each classic tune to its elemental planes, then playfully rebuilds.

The new release is produced by a genuine Bay Area jazz legend, Orrin Keepnews, who has a record-producing pedigree going back more than 50 years, having guided the careers of such greats as Thelonius Monk, Wes Montgomery, Bill Evans and Cannonball Adderly. Keepnews has gathered a world-class quartet for this project, which features Eric Reed on piano, Mark Taylor on drums, Gerald Cannon on bass and Dave Ellis on tenor saxophone (Ellis, like Donnay, is another Keepnews prot}g}).

Speaking by phone from her Mill Valley recording studio, Donnay sings her praises for the 83-year-old recording legend. "Orrin is a big part of the reason this project even came into being," Donnay says.

"His stamp is on everything here. I can't begin to tell you how gifted he is. ... This guy's the real thing."

It was Keepnews, she says, who convinced Donnay that she, too, was the real thing, and to make the decision to return to what she calls her "jazz roots." And it was Keepnews who guided her every step of the way. "He kicked my butt to make me better," she says.

The result is an astonishing collection of fresh Donnay renditions of mostly classic material commonly identified with the likes of Ray Charles, Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington, backed by a dream team of jazz virtuosos.

Least effective is the only original composition by Donnay - an anti-Bush invective called "Stop This Train!" - which, to be fair, probably suffers mostly from a close proximity to some of the greatest lyrics ever written.

A performer with a social conscience and a devout Buddhist practice, Donnay has enjoyed an eclectic career, winning local and national success as an award-winning and Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter who led the way for many women in the indie artist circuit. Her songs and vocals have been featured on television ("The Young and the Restless," "Days of Our Lives," "One Life to Live," "Nash Bridges," "The Unit") as well as in feature films ("Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "Reservoirs of Strength").

A 2001 single, "Crack in the Sidewalk" was a hit on college and public radio, receiving rotation on 80 stations nationwide. Her song "One World" has been performed on five continents as an anthem for world peace and was adopted for the United Nations' 50th anniversary celebration in 1995. She has toured the country with The Black Crowes, Eddie Money, Dan Fogelberg, Neil Young and Huey Lewis, and is touring with another Marin-based legend of Americana swing music, Dan Hicks.

These are session recordings, not layered tracks, with all the spontaneity and surprises that come with this kind of summit. One of those surprises is the other star who emerges from these sessions, if not by design than by virtue of his formidable technique: young pianist Eric Reed. If Donnay is the sweet soul of this collection, then this former child prodigy is its playful, racing heart.

But it is Donnay at center stage, and rightly so. Whether it's the drawling, laconic lament of a ne'er-do-well in "Small Day Tomorrow" (written by Robert Dorough and Frances Landesman), the personal apocalypse of Mose Allison's "If You Live," the Ray Charles-influenced moan of "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying" (written by Joe Greene) - a song featuring a brilliant solo turn by Ellis on saxophone - or an arrangement of "No Regrets" by Harry Tobias and Roy Ingraham that would give Phoebe Snow a run for her money, what's pleasing about Donnay's deconstructions is that she doesn't merely open up these old timepieces. She shows us what made them tick.