COMPOSERS: Jacqui Dankworth
LABELS: Specific Jazz
PERFORMER: Jacqui Dankworth (vocals), Malcolm Edmonstone (pno), Chris Allard (gt) etc
CATALOGUE NO: SPEC014
Jazz musician and writer Graham Collier’s contention that ‘jazz happens in real time, once’ refers to the spontaneity of its creation, but it’s also poignantly true of this album in other ways. The interpretation of jazz standards is both personal and unique on each occasion; Jacqui Dankworth’s particular approach always conveys a sense of completeness, demonstrating that finely judged phrasing is little more than an exercise in scansion without timbral nuance, that timbre means nothing without control and that control means nothing without the ability to surprise the listener by eschewing the obvious just often enough.
Underlining all of the above, this set of mainly ballads also features her father Sir John’s last appearance on disc, which together with some luminous arrangements (mostly his) make this CD an event that could only have happened once in that sense, too. It’s both a heartfelt personal memento and a sensitively recorded addition to Ms Dankworth’s recorded output. Roger Thomas