PATRICIA BARBER
Live: A Fortnight In France

Blue Note

Read the Jazzitude review of Patricia Barber/Verse
Read the Jazzitude review of Patricia Barber/Mythologies

The arrival of a new Patricia Barber CD is an exciting event, particularly so after the tour de force of her last studio release, Verse. On that album Barber found her voice as a writer, demonstrating an ability to combine modern mainstream jazz with pop forms and highly literary lyrics. Having already shown her piano chops and distinctive, highly intimate vocal style on a number of previous releases including Modern Cool and Nightclub, Barber appeared to offer the whole package in a way that many other jazz musicians simply haven’t been able to.

Live: A Fortnight In France, the new release, is not merely a marking of time while Barber tours and gets her next studio work ready. Though there are a few numbers here from Verse, there are also some wonderful Barber reinterpretations of standards and some new material as well, all played by Barber’s tightly knit ensemble comprised of guitarist Neal Alger, bassist Michael Arnopol, and drummer Eric Montzka. This group has toured together relentlessly since the release of Verse. When not on tour they generally play Monday night gigs at Chicago’s Green Mill; all of this playing together has turned them into one of the tightest combos in jazz today. They have become Barber’s voice and possess the ability to turn her originals and standards work into a sound that is uniquely hers.

The album, a performance edited together from concerts in the French cities of La Rouchelle, Metz, and Paris, begins with a new original “Gotcha,” a study in revenge and paranoia that sounds like it could easily have been an outtake from Verse. Over a cool samba-like beat, she intones her literate yet emotionally charged lyrics: “I gotcha comin’/I gotcha goin’/…your edifice is starting to crack and peel/your girlfriend is starting to panic and steal/whatever’s left/of a small piece/of a small pie/of a small man/with a much smaller life.” It’s a great companion piece to “Pieces,” a song from Verse that Barber tackles later in the set. Next is a natural for performance in front of a French audience, “Dansons La Gigue!,” Barber’s musical setting of text by French symbolist poet Paul Verlaine. “I’ve always been a Francophile,” says Barber. “I love the people, the language, the food and wine. And I love Paris most of all. One thing I particularly like about the French is that they’re not cloying. That’s a bit like my music which is why I believe we have a mutual affection.”

Certainly no one could call Barber’s instrumental composition “Crash,” a highly dissonant, high energy piece that is primarily rhythm-based cloying. Though tightly structured, it allows room for both Barber and Alger to turn in highly thoughtful solos. Barber’s playing demonstrates why she must be taken seriously as one of the foremost pianists working in the jazz genre today. While playing rhythmically interesting, harmonically rich solos, she is able to insert a sensual blues quality into her playing seemingly at will, grounding even the most erudite turns of musical phrase. It’s part of what makes Barber such an exciting artist and one that is able to build on the history of jazz music while never sounding like anyone but herself.

It’s often with standards, highly melodic songs that everyone knows, that Barber is able to really show listeners what she can do. She can take an overly sentimental song like “Laura” or the somewhat too familiar like “Call Me” and make it a new listening experience, teasing the poetry from lyrics that seemed not to merit serious consideration with her unique phrasing and warm, cabaret-style voice. “Norweigian Wood,” a song that Barber and her group perform often, is much less about the lyrics or vocal delivery as it is about the new moods, feelings, and textures that the band finds in the song’s potentially modal harmonic structure. All of the band members solo, each building on the heights realized by the previous soloist, giving the piece a spiraling, surging energy that pushes it towards its conclusion. The instrumental standard here is “Witchcraft” performed in a straight-ahead style that allows Barber to demonstrate her ability to play in a typical pianistic style that pays respects to French pianist and influence Jackie Terrason as well as recalling the effortless swing of pianists like Red Garland and Wynton Kelly.

The remaining track, the newly composed “Whiteworld” is a masterstroke, combining poetry and a funk groove into an energetic performance that show there’s virtually nowhere that Barber can’t go. The lyrics comment on Western imperialism, and while they could easily have been written at any time about archaeologists, missionaries, or other interlopers into other cultures, there is no question that the current situation in Iraq cannot have been far from her mind, either: “I’m a First World Oedpius and Mother Earth is down on her knees.” Even if the politically charged poetic lyrics don’t appeal, there’s no way of resisting the groove that Alger and Montzka deliver. “Whiteworld” is the first song to be released from Barber’s forthcoming song cycle commissioned by the Guggenheim Foundation.

It will be exciting to hear that release, or pretty much anything else that Patricia Barber does over the next several years. In the meantime, Live: A Fortnight in France provides us with plenty of what we already love about her, and just enough new material and sounds to whet our appetite.