News

June reviews of SV

6.26.2010

ALBANY JAZZ

June 2010

“..brilliant vocalese; the show was outstanding.”

“There’s something very cool about being part of a small crowd watching an up-and-coming artist perform; it’s like you’ve been let in on this important secret that’s going to impact a lot more people, and you’ve got the jump on them. Take vocalist Sachal Vasandani, for instance: The first time I saw him, he was knocking (maybe) 100 people’s socks off at Freihofer’s gazebo Stage. If we’re lucky enough to see him in these parts again, make sure to fill a seat, because this is a rare talent that needs to be less of a secret.

“Nuance and control are two of Vasandani’s most important tools, and they were in evidence right from the start of the opener “That Old Black Magic.” At one point during the song, he bent one note, so gradually, so gently, and so expertly, and did it while holding that note high above the audience’s heads. During the middle section of “There’s a Small Hotel”, he brought his vocal down to a hush as he “told” the object of the song, “Who wants people?” Then, in an instant, he’s swinging for the fences again with a weapons-grade set of chops. But no matter how hard he hits, there’s an intimacy about everything Vasandani does.”

NEW YORK TIMES

June 2010

Sachal Vasandani seemed to want to take requests for his encore at Joe’s Pub on Wednesday night, but consensus proved elusive. So after some dithering, he left the choice to his pianist, Jeb Patton, who picked “I Remember You.” That standard had been faintly foreshadowed, to anyone paying attention: Mr. Vasandani interposed its melody during his set closer, briefly planting Johnny Mercer’s lyrics in unfamiliar soil.

This was a typical exchange for Mr. Vasandani, a young singer with a flexible grasp of jazz traditions. The passing allusion, the spry rearrangement, the trust placed in his sidemen: all par for the course.

With his two albums on the Mack Avenue label — “Eyes Wide Open,” from 2007, and “We Move,” from last year — Mr. Vasandani has made his case for a limber, pop-literate, semi-confessional strain of modern jazz singing...truer to a jazz impulse of melodic elaboration.

One of the best lessons to take from this tributary of the jazz-vocal mainstream is an emphasis on musicianship, and Mr. Vasandani does his part. He shared the spotlight with his working band — Mr. Patton, the bassist Joe Sanders and the drummer Quincy Davis — and a pair of guests, the trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and the saxophonist John Ellis. The whole crew was featured on a swaggering new original, “Babe’s Blues.”

ALBANY TIMES UNION

JUNE 2010

Sachal Vasandani is a jazz singer who sings, not swaggers. With a strong voice and a confident if somewhat straight-forward approach to his material, the Chicago-born singer makes the most of his unusual phrasing. And in a way, he may owe as much to Willie Nelson as he does to veteran jazz vocalists like Jon Hendricks and Kurt Elling.

In concert at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center’s Spa Little Theater on Thursday night, Vasandani rolled through his repertoire with an offbeat wobble to his phrasing, weighting unexpected words in the song lyrics which made his melody lines flow somewhat behind the beat, somewhat ahead of the beat, but rarely squarely on the money.

And that is what makes him such an interesting vocalist.

Vasandani has just a pair of albums under his belt – his 2007 debut, “Eyes Wide Open” and his 2009 sophomore effort “We Move” – but he offered a choice selection of tunes in concert. He opened with the Harold Arlen/Johnny Mercer classic “That Old Black Magic,” as his backing trio – pianist Jeb Patton, drummer Quincy Davis and new bassist Joe Sanders – whisked their way through a skittering beat. And later in the program, he dropped in another standard, Cole Porter’s “I Get a Kick Out of You,” taken at a luxuriously languid tempo as a duet with Patton.

But Vasandani isn’t just about the standards, either. As it turns out, he’s also a songwriter of considerable talent, and his original songs – especially “Royal Eyes” (dedicated to his late grandmother) and the gently rolling “Every Ocean, Every Star” (with some exquisite bowed bass work from Sanders) – helped establish the singer as an artist with a personal vision. He’s certainly not simply on some retro jazz hipster/crooner kick like too many of the up-and-coming young male jazz singers of recent years.

One of his finest performances of the evening came early with something of a mash-up. He fused his own composition, “Escape,” with a beautiful interpretation of the Richard Rodgers/Lorenz Hart nugget, “There’s a Small Hotel,” and in the process, the two songs together became something more than just the two songs.