Laurel Masse is the 'real thing'By Kitty Montgomery, Reviewer
06/06/2008
When you come out to catch Laurel Masse, the cabaret and all-that-jazz singer who performed for the Chamber Arts Festival of Marbletown, May 24, do not anticipate some retro, tucked-up chick act.
This diva who crested the top of the 70s music scene as one fourth of Manhattan Transfer and got redirected, career wise, by a close encounter with the Grim Reaper, is the real, be-here-now deal.
This diva who crested the top of the 70s music scene as one fourth of Manhattan Transfer and got redirected, career wise, by a close encounter with the Grim Reaper, is the real, be-here-now deal.
Floated in a double set by a two-man band at Quimby Auditorium on the Ulster County Community College campus - with giants like pianist arranger Tex Arnold, the great Margaret Whiting's musical director for a quarter of a century; and bass man Tom Hubbard, who could ask for anything more -- Masse's lyric spirit hovers someplace between wide-eyed waif and red-hot mama (Yo, even Caucasian ladies get the blues).
Tuned through a mic, her clear soaring soprano casts lines that web bridges to worlds within songs most singers just surf, to serve personal glory. A true artist, touching "the great American song book" like a Lieder singer, it is Masse's gift to suffer her material, which is one giant step beyond dramatizing it.
Though she never wide wails with her voice, you will think Judy Garland, maybe Edith Piaf, as her vulnerability engages you in tunes that seem drawn for "real life." And touching on her own life, in riffs between these tunes, Masse morphs to Garland as innocent, courageous Dorothy, on the way to some Oz, just a little down the road. It's an infectious approach to existence that leads us to take the Masse phenom closer to heart with each song.
Those songs, their wistfulness, their light is underscored by Arnold and Hubbard's mix. You have to ask, since the term "swing" is used in connection with Masse's work, just what the word means.
We think of slightly more rocking groove, a subliminal boogie, than what this band turns out, but their music percolated, insidious, effervescent, swinging, so to speak, the night along. To pick a favorite among a double dozen numbers? - The play list rests beside us, memories of the romances flashing by as we glance.
The bubble of the Brubeck family's "Blue Rondo," lyricized by Masse in articulate tongue twisting lines? Brooks Bowman's "Once in a Million Moons," Chris Thiele's devil song, "Stay Away," that "Seven Years in Under Four Minutes" Manhattan Transfer medley, in case you wondered what that platinum and gold album band was all about? Or how about Willie Nelson's "Crazy," which song turf Masse shares with Patsy Cline? We'll take 'em all.
©Daily Freeman 2008
