Just wanted to say that my girlfriend and I caught Jacqui Naylor's late Thanksgiving night show, the last of her three day stay, at the Blue Note yesterday.
Jacqui (and her band) was awesome and have to thank the Tape Project team for bringing her to our attention. The lady can sing! She has a beautiful voice with great range, depth and an effortless quality. Her vowel work really impressed my girlfriend who's a trained opera singer. Also performing with Jacqui was 11 year old Michael Wong (He knows Doc!) on piano, keyboards and guitar. I can't even imagine being 11 yo and performing at the Blue Note!
Last night Jacqui did some familiar numbers from the TP tape release such as Summertime-though wish Michael had captured this new arrangement with Josh's drum solo! It would have kicked ass on our high-end systems.
Jacqui also did a variety of originals including her newly written song I'm a Lucky Girl as well as arrangements of some rock pieces from her other albums including REM (Losing My Religion), Pink Floyd (Money) and Bill Withers (Ain't No Sunshine). My personal favorite from the evening was Jacqui's "smashing tunes" arrangement of the Blossom Dearie inspired The Surrey with the Fringe on Top from Oklahoma done to George Benson's Breezin'. Simply spectacular!
The highlight of the evening was getting to meet Jacqui upstair at the Blue Note and have her sign her TP album! She was so gracious and charming - not to mention being tickled pink at being the first release put out by Dan and the crew.
What do you think Dan and crew. Another Naylor album down the road???
Don't miss her if she's in the neighborhood! Check out her website for tour info.
http://www.jacquinaylor.com/tour.html