{"id":3334,"date":"2014-02-03T21:01:58","date_gmt":"2014-02-03T21:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.artinfo.com\/blunotes\/?p=3334"},"modified":"2014-02-03T21:01:58","modified_gmt":"2014-02-03T21:01:58","slug":"relaxin-with-karen-oberlin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/2014\/02\/03\/relaxin-with-karen-oberlin\/","title":{"rendered":"Relaxin' With Karen Oberlin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
Singer Karen Oberlin in duo with guitarist Sean Harkness at Manhattan's Jazz at the Kitano\/ photo: Takako Harkness<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nToo many singers try too hard these days. At least, that\u2019s how it seems.
\nSome labor to appear as though not trying or caring at all, approximating the ubiquitous small-voiced detachment of indie pop. Others make their grandiose efforts abundantly clear in case there is a celebrity panel nearby to judge them into stardom (as, often, there is).
\nAll of which makes it that much more relaxing and rewarding to spend time with a singer who is fine with just being natural, who needs nothing more. If she\u2019s working hard, well, that\u2019s between her and, say, her guitarist.
\nSuch was the case during Karen Oberlin<\/a>\u2019s\u00a0late set on Saturday at Manhattan\u2019s Jazz at the Kitano club, within the Kitano Hotel, where Oberlin and guitarist Sean Harkness celebrated the release of a duo CD, \u201cA Wish<\/a>\u201d (Miranda Music).
\nIn New York City, if you\u2019re white and you sing songs without swinging hard, rocking out or funking things up, if you draw upon a wide range of repertoire with equivalent attention to lyrics, history and musicianship, all of that will likely land you in the \u201ccabaret\u201d category. That\u2019s the milieu in which Oberlin has achieved both acclaim and awards. She should be more widely heard on stages that look beyond that scene\u2014perhaps Lincoln Center\u2019s \u201cAmerican Songbook\u201d series\u2014as well as at jazz clubs. (I\u2019m told she\u2019ll be at Manhattan\u2019s Birdland jazz club in April to reprise the music on a previous Miranda Music CD, \u201cSecret Love; The Music of Doris Day,\u201d with a septet.)
\nAt the Kitano on Saturday, Oberlin revealed the power she can summon and project just once, fleetingly, near the end of Joni Mitchell\u2019s \u201cLove,\u201d which, she later told me, she hears as \u201can exulation.\u201d Mostly, she negotiated the lovely space between a knowing mid-and lower range and a glowing upper one. Part of Oberlin\u2019s appeal is the confidence and purity of voice that invites restraint. She held notes exclusively where to do so made sense and released her lovely vibrato in only carefully measured doses, when it served the narrative and musical logic of a given song. These songs came from many eras, loosely connected by themes of \u201clove and life\u201d\u2014\u201cWhat else is there to sing about?\u201d she asked at one point\u2014and were tethered to arrangements voiced by Harkness\u2019s guitar, through playing that never receded into mere accompaniment.
\nIn Harkness, Oberlin has both a playful and challenging foil. He set up grooves only to disturb them with wily single-note runs, yet never left Oberlin floating without rhythmic anchor. He drew on stylistic legacies as diverse as Jim Hall, Bucky Pizzarelli, and Jo\u00e3o Gilberto, without sounding derivative. Oberlin, too, never dipped into anything like mimicry, not even on the ballad \u201cMy One and Only Love,\u201d for which Johnny Hartman\u2019s classic rendition in collaboration with John Coltrane is hard to evade.
\nOberlin isn\u2019t much interested in overtly complicated musical interpretation. She focuses instead on the implied complications of a song\u2019s lyrics and structure; she leaned in and out of pitches, for instance, on the rarely heard Billy Strayhorn composition \u201cNo One Knows\u201d to convey both complex shades of meaning and tricky chord progressions. The most tender and affecting moments of the set arrived via two songs composed by pianist Fred Hersch. Oberlin made a good case for \u201cA Wish,\u201d with lyrics by Norma Winstone, as the quietist and least saccharine of Valentine\u2019s Day standards. \u201cGood Things Happen Slowly,\u201d which Hersch wrote in 2009 after recovering from a life-threatening three-month coma<\/a>,\u00a0features lyrics by David Hajdu, who is Oberlin\u2019s husband, and whose celebrated work as a writer includes the most deeply researched <\/a>account\u00a0of Hersch\u2019s life and music I\u2019ve read.\u00a0Hajdu\u2019s lyrics fleshed out ideas concerning life\u2019s unpredictable vicissitudes. Yet the song relied most powerfully on a couplet drawn from what Hersch\u2019s doctor had told his partner, Scott Morgan, while the pianist was lost in motionless limbo: Good things happen slowly\/ bad things happen fast.
\nOberlin made those lines ever more meaningful and musical because they sounded effortless.
\nPhoto: Takako Harkness<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Too many singers try too hard these days. At least, that\u2019s how it seems. Some labor to appear as though not trying or caring at all, approximating the ubiquitous small-voiced detachment of indie pop. Others make their grandiose efforts abundantly clear in case there is a celebrity panel nearby to judge them into stardom (as, … <\/p>\n

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