Svetlana and the Delancey Five

Svetlana and the Delancey Five: Night at the Speakeasy

by C. Michael Bailey
February 17, 2016

The name Svetlana and the Delancey Five sounds like a Cold War cadre of marauding spies. Moscow-native Svetlana Shmulyian is the real article and brings a certain “other-worldness" to a jazz repertoire existing somewhere between 1920 and the Rapture. The band's Night at the Speakeasy is their debut for the West Coast OA2 Record label. With that title, it is just too easy to assume that this recording is simply an expose of the older forms of jazz typically committed ...