Emilie-Claire Barlow At Nocturne Jazz and Supper Club

Emilie-Claire Barlow
Nocturne Jazz and Supper Club
Denver, Colorado
April 5, 2023

The most prominent feature of Emilie Claire Barlow's music is its pure happiness. Disneyland bills itself as "The Happiest Place on Earth." But Barlow has the Imagineers beat and she does that without focus groups or prepackaged commercial products. Instead, she uses charm, soul and charisma. Her personality effuses happiness and it's backed up by her choice of songs and their arrangements, often incorporating Brazilian bossa novas and sambas and other easy-flowing rhythms evoking an afternoon of warm sunshine and no phone calls or emails to return. Wednesday night, Canadian Barlow brought her entire band to Denver to show off her vocal and musical skills.

Barlow is on tour to promote her latest album, Spark Bird (Empress Music Group, 2023) inspired by her new-found love of birds. The term "spark bird," in industry parlance, refers to the bird that first captures the interest of someone leading them to become a birder. Birds generally seem like happy creatures and often evoke happiness in humans, with only a couple of notable exceptions. (See, Hitchcock, Alfred, The Birds; Poe, Edgar Allan, The Raven.)

Her inspiration came from an extended stay in Oaxaca, Mexico where she was captivated not just by bird watching, but bird listening. It's a place with a wide variety of birds and therefore a wide variety of bird songs. She eventually began to identify the birds and their songs, what time of day they would appear and how the various bird music fit together. Duly inspired by the immersive avian orchestra, she decided to put together an album of bird songs. Spark Bird has eight songs, six of which the multi-lingual Barlow sings in English with one in French and another in Spanish.

Wednesday night at Nocturne, Barlow performed several of those tunes as well as others from her back-catalog, usually songs with some sort of bird connection. One of the exceptions, however, was one of the highlights of the evening. She expressed her love of Sting's music as she described his song "La Belle Dame Sans Regrets" (The Fair Lady of No Regrets). She had transcribed the late Kenny Kirkland's gentle and melodic piano solo in the version of the song appearing on Sting's album Mercury Falling (A&M Records, 1996). Wednesday night, Barlow scatted the melody as pianist Amanda Tosoff played it in unison as a soli. She evoked a similar effect on the Gershwin brothers' "Little Jazz Bird" where she had written vocalese lyrics to a solo her guitarist Reg Schwager had played at one time. Wednesday night, they played and sang it together. Another highlight was Van Morrison's "Sweet Thing" performed as a duet with bassist John Maharaj.

Barlow not only sang, but also played an array of percussion instruments including the triangle (on "Over the Rainbow") shaker, finger snaps and even a little bass drum. She sang several songs in French and, even though I didn't understand the lyrics, it's always a pleasure to hear a classy woman singing in French (or even speaking French). Maybe that's just me.

Barlow has released a dozen albums prior to Spark Bird and so had a deep catalog to draw from for her concert. This was her first performance in Denver and, in fact, her first trip to the city. Born in Toronto, she has primarily worked in Canada, but has lately started to focus more attention on the United States. She recently performed several shows in New York City at, appropriately enough, Birdland. She has won two Juno awards, the Canadian equivalent of a Grammy.

She brought her entire regular band with her from Canada rather than try to assemble a local pick-up band. The extra effort and expense paid dividends in the form of not only a tight ensemble, but accompaniment that was extremely sympathetic and catalyzing.

Barlow generally covers jazz and pop standards, but she and her collaborators have effectively rearranged these old chestnuts and revivified them to help them take flight once again no matter how many times they've flown around the block. The arrangement of "Over the Rainbow" took a brief break from happiness for a short journey down Melancholy Lane with a lament about birds flying over the rainbow while the singer remains earthbound. In her arrangement, the jealousy is emphasized with a plaintive plea in the final lines,

"Why can't I fly, Over the rainbow Why can't I fly..."

But, of course, any gloom was offset by that beautiful rainbow and so, in the case of Wednesday night's concert, any dark clouds were quickly dispatched and the atmosphere was quickly recalibrated to Barlow's default position of sunshine.

Set List

Sunshine Superman; Over the Rainbow; Fais Comme l'Osieau (Do Like the Bird); Surrey with the Fringe on Top; Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head; O Pato (The Duck); La Belle Dame Sans Regrets; Sweet Thing; Skylark; Little Jazz Bird; Another one in French; Bird of Beauty; These Boots Were Made for Walkin' (Slinky version).

The Band

Emilie Claire Barlow, vocals, percussion; Amanda Tosoff, piano; Reg Schwager, guitar; Fabio Ragnelli, drums; John Maharaj, bass.

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