This week’s Hot New Local Single is a recording of Dizzy Gillespie’s “Night in Tunisia” by Adi Yeshaya’s Orchestra featuring vocalist Jennifer Grimm. It’s from a new Yeshaya album called Produce.
The album features Grimm in a a variety of different musical styles, ranging from the swing era classic “All of Me” to Cole Porter and Burt Bacharach standards and even Bob Dylan’s “Make You Feel My Love.”
On “Night in Tunisia,” Grimm adeptly tackles the challenging vocalese lyrics of Eddie Jefferson. To shed more light on the term, vocalese is the word that describes the practice or writing lyrics to the melodies of improvised instrumental jazz solos. Some of the famous purveyors of the style include Jon Hendricks of the trio Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, or Clarence Beeks, who made vocal renditions of “Moody’s Mood for Love” and “Parker’s Mood” under the name King Pleasure. Eddie Jefferson was considered a master of the art and earned the moniker “The Godfather of Vocalese.”
Yeshaya’s arrangement of “A Night in Tunisia” has a lot of interesting rhythmic variety and has an especially interesting treatment of the vocalese section, punctuated with musical responses to the complex phrases of Eddie Jefferson’s lyrics. The band is tight and it is an altogether impressive performance.
If you want to hear more, you can catch the Adi Yeshaya Orchestra with Jennifer Grimm live at the Dakota Wednesday night, October 29th at 7.
If you want to learn more about Adi Yeshaya’s new album Produce, listen here to the interview from Jazz88’s Morning Show, or visit his website here.
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