Vanessa Rubin Quartet
Jazz Showcase,Chicago, IL USA, Sun.Nov 10, 2019
by Maja Rios
Jazz vocalist, Vanessa Rubin, from Cleveland, Ohio, has represented modern jazz vocals for the last 30 plus years. I have followed her career since she started and have always enjoyed her interpretations of jazz and modern jazz pieces. I especially liked her early CDs of lesser-known modern jazz pieces.
At this gig, she featured a trio that included Perry Hughes, guitar(Detroit), Duncan Macmillan, Organ,(Detroit), and Winard Harper(New York), drummer. The band opened with instrumental of jazz standard, Speak Low, played as an uptempo samba by the trio, with a long, well-done solo by Perry Hughes on guitar.
Vanessa came up after the one instrumental with approx. one hour set that was mostly blues/jazz standards of Moonglow, All Blues, Now Baby or Never, Are You Ready For Me, and a few others that were also standards, Dindi and Ballad, You’ve Changed. Most of the material was good but predictable. The trio did a good job of following her lead but it was obvious they hadn’t played together as a band for very long.
My main disappointment was that Vanessa did no major songs from any of her cd’s and none from her latest album, which she was selling, of all Tadd Dameron compositions. She did none of my favorites from her past albums, such as “Black Nile”, “Simone” “Soul Eyes” or other modern jazz compositions, which put her on the map. I hope if she lands in Chicago, again in near future she will include some of her straight-ahead more interesting jazz pieces Loved her leopard dress though!
