Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Natalie Douglas: To Nina... Live at Birdland

144

Natalie Douglas: To Nina... Live at Birdland

By

View read count
Natalie Douglas: To Nina... Live at Birdland
Cabaret singer Natalie Douglas offers To Nina... Live at Birdland as a tribute to the life and songs of the late great Nina Simone. Douglas performs many songs made famous by Simone, including "I Put a Spell On You," "My Baby Just Cares for Me," "I Loves You Porgy," "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to be Free," and "Four Women." Douglas engages a live audience for an hour as she shares personal accounts of her connections with Simone's music. She is enjoying herself and the audience seems to be doing the same. Unfortunately, at times, Simone and her music get lost in all of the celebration.

Nina Simone, like Billie Holiday, was celebrated more for her ability to make listeners understand the extent of her love, pain, anger, and struggle than she was for her vocal talents. She was not afraid to say God-damned about injustice, and when she sang it, you knew she meant every word. Alternatively, Douglas is a cabaret singer and that background is a big part of the performance on To Nina. When she belts out those notes and performs, Douglas' connection is with the audience. She does not capture the emotion of the songs like Nina Simone did, which is a great source of disappointment.

What is enjoyable about Douglas' performance is listening in on the sharing that she does with her audience. As she speaks about when she was first exposed to Simone's music, she fosters an understanding about her connection with Simone's music, something that is not so obvious in her singing. The audience's reaction is to that gesture is great to hear because it's full of happiness. They are having fun, and that is hard to ignore.

Although her singing style does not appeal to my personal taste, To Nina deserves a listen. Nina Simone was, as Douglas described her, "one of the great griots of our time." And maybe, to Douglas' credit, it is not how she chose to tell the story, but that she was willing to tell it at all. Here's to Nina.

Track Listing

I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free; Summertime/I Loves You Porgy; Work Song; House of the Rising Sun; I Put A Spell on You; Forbidden Fruit; My Baby Just Cares for Me; You Can Have Him; Four Women; Intro to Why; Why (The King of Love is Dead); Children Go Where I Send You; Natalie tells a story; His Eye is on the Sparrow.

Personnel

Natalie Douglas: vocals; Mark Hartman: piano; Patience Higgins: tenor saxophone; Sean McDaniel: percussion; Steve Doyle: bass.

Album information

Title: To Nina... Live at Birdland | Year Released: 2005 | Record Label: WBG Records

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.