Angela Verbrugge with Ray Gallon: In The Wonder of the Night

Canadian jazz vocalist and songwriter Angela Verbrugge understands something that too many contemporary singers miss. Intimacy in jazz is not about shrinking the music but about drawing the audience in. On In  The Wonder of the Night, her duet recording with acclaimed New York pianist Ray Gallon she works within the voice-and-piano format with uncommon confidence, keeping the music in constant motion. The album may carry a nocturnal and lunar thread across its eleven tracks and twelve songs, but beneath the moonlight, there is real swing, harmonic invention and conversational interplay.

The session opens brightly with "S'posin," and the chemistry between the two artists is immediately evident. Verbrugge has a beautiful, inviting voice, digging into the lyrics and dancing atop Gallon's swinging feel. There is power in her delivery, yet she balances it with subtlety and restraint. The originals possess an inner strength that emerges from the same emotional landscape as the standards. Her original bossa nova "Paradise Defined" rests on the notion that genuine human connections are paradise itself, and she delivers it without a trace of sentimentality.

There is also an artful emotional continuum linking the originals "I'm 99% Sure Of You" and "I'm A Cliché." In the first, Verbrugge gives a clever, self-protective voice to someone hesitating on the edge of commitment, still clinging to independence. By the time "I'm A Cliché" arrives, it becomes a quiet ballad that captures the moment when logic begins to yield to love's pull.

Verbrugge also programs the album thoughtfully, pairing "Moonlight Becomes You" with the title track, "In The Wonder of the Night." The former receives a straight-ahead treatment, while the boppish vocalese title track deepens the twilight atmosphere, giving Gallon room to stretch rhythmically and harmonically. Throughout, Gallon proves to be the ideal collaborator. Rooted in the language of bebop and the blues, he continually reshapes the music beneath Verbrugge's vocals with harmonic sophistication and an elevated sense of rhythm. He listens closely, reacts instantly, and never settles for predictable accompaniment.

Irving Berlin's "Reaching for the Moon" offers a delightful juxtaposition as the arrangement shifts the number from a waltz to Latin jazz. Gallon is never distracted by these tempo changes. He has rhythmic elasticity that continually propels the music forward.

The duo closes with "Moonlight in Vermont," showcasing what is self-evident, namely the absence of ego and musical trust. They have accomplished something deceptively difficult by making a familiar format sound newly alive.