Fay Victor: Darker Than Blue

So it is with Ms. Victor's delivery. She and her band take this most ill behaved composition and spank it into total rebellion before turning it into the quiet eight-minute tour de force it is. "Tonight" also illustrates another core characteristic of this disc, that of "less is more." The majority of the instrumentation is spare and spread out, as on the voice, bass, drum treatment of Debussy's "My Reverie." The music is almost self propelled, sporting a sharp efficiency, music stripped to the bone. Even upbeat pieces like "Strollin'" a characterized by a certain economy that can only derive from practice and reference. If the earlier Herbie Nichols piece was not challenging enough, Victor bases "Strollin'" on Mingus' ("Nostalgia in Times Square").

Fay Victor shows she knows her way around standards on "Star Eyes" and "What A Little Moonlight Can Do." She sings these not so much straight as expelling them with some creative entropy. She possesses a voice and a style that will have to be honestly confronted by the astute listener. Fay victor is a thinking person's jazz vocalist.

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