Hinda Hoffman Meets Soul Message: People

When preparing a meal, the balance of ingredients matters. A little too much here, not quite enough there, and any recipe can fall short of expectations. On the album People, Hinda Hoffman, one of Chicago's finest jazz singers, is paired with the splendid quartet Soul Message, a blend which one might expect to produce a tasty and tantalizing feast for the ears and heart.

Instead, Hoffman sounds rather like a fish out of water, laboring to lend excitement and charm to songs and charts in which she seems, even in her best moments, off- kilter and unsure, which is clearly unlike her earlier work. Hoffman only hits her stride on the title song, scrounging elsewhere to find a nexus between her even-tempered approach and Soul Message's more robust and outspoken style. Even such warhorses as "Old Devil Moon" and "Angel Eyes," which should be slam-dunks for Hoffman, are for the most part squandered. Problematic tempos, erratic results.

The charts certainly do not help, as time signatures on most numbers may suit the quartet but are not anywhere near Hoffman's more laid-back comfort zone. And, even when they are, she seems rather more perplexed than usual, fumbling some lyrics and a handful of notes she would ordinarily nail shut. Even Cole Porter ("All of You," "Get Out of Town") does not emerge unscathed. Hoffman is not bad, but she was far more engaging and at ease on her earliest albums, You Are There (1995) and Moon and Sand (2000).

As for Soul Message, it is a generally capable group consisting of Chris Foreman on Hammond organ, Greg Ward on saxophone (mostly alto), lee rothenberg on guitar and Greg Rockingham on drums. The style and sound are basically soul/funk, splendid for Soul Message, not so much for special guest Hoffman. In theory, asking her to sit in must have seemed like a good idea; it is a shame it did not work quite so well in practice.

In sum, a rather uneven session whose flavor is impaired by an arrangement of savory ingredients whose mixture, as it turns out, is less appetizing than one might have envisioned.

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