Kate McGarry, The Target (Palmetto). McGarry’s singing evaded me. I don’t mean that I didn’t get it. I mean that I had never heard it. Then, during a recent engagement at Jazz Alley in Seattle, Luciana Souza mentioned that the guitarist appearing with her, Keith Ganz, was married to “the wonderful singer Kate McGarry.” I took that as a recommendation.
Back at Rifftides world headquarters, I listened to The Target. I’m glad I did. McGarry incorporates intriguing approaches to vocal color, timbre and phrasing that seem to come from folk and pop sources as much as from jazz . In the 1920s hit “Do Something,” she swings as straight ahead as the young Anita O’Day. In Ganz’s delightful “New Love Song,” she evokes blithe sophistication worthy of Blossom Dearie. Steven Cardenas’s “She Always Will,” with McGarry’s lyrics, might be the meditation of an Irish troubador. I much prefer her sinuous take on Sting’s “Sister Moon” to the composer’s.
On several standards, McGarry maintains balance between respect for the song and a search for new possibilities. The resulting creative tension produces memorable versions of “The Lamp Is Low” and “The Heather On The Hill,” in which she includes the seldom-heard verse of the Lerner and Loewe classic. In “It Might As Well Be Spring,” she nudges and teases the time and succeeds in every harmonic chance she takes. Throughout, the intonation of her light voice is down the middle, even in the vocalese on a difficult unison passage with Ganz’s guitar in Souza’s demanding “No Wonder.” McGarry’s other accompanists are Gary Versace on piano, organ and accordian; bassist Reuben Rogers; drummer Greg Hutchison. On three pieces, there are solos by the daring tenor saxophonist Donny McCaslin. Experts at illusive, suggestive improvising, Ganz and Verace solo on several tracks.