Thoughts on the Week: Singers Make Dangerous Companions
A late-night adventure with a gang of jazz singers leads me to Siberia - a dive bar hidden inside an NYC subway station. Plus, a week of vocalists on The Art of the Story.
Earlier this week I found myself at that moment of the night when you realize that, in the words of jazz singer Linda Peterson, “it’s too late to leave early.”
I had gone to see singer/musician/songwriter Nicole Zuraitis perform her astounding 20-song suite The Devil I Knew at Dizzy’s at Jazz at Lincoln Center. The show was a tour de force, raising the bar for anyone writing original contemporary jazz or jazz-adjacent songs. Last month, Nicole released The Devil… as a concept album, produced by Larry Klein and featuring an incredible collection of collaborators ranging from Vince Mendoza and Jerry Hey to Larry Goldings, Christian McBride and Jon Cowherd.
I interviewed her about the project the day before. That conversation will come out as a Third Story podcast episode next month.
On the way into the club, I ran into my pal, singer Janis Siegel (of The Manhattan Transfer), as well as Kate McGarry, Tessa Souter, and Lauren Kinhan & Peter Eldridge (of New York Voices).
New York jazz vocal royalty.
After the show was over, as we gathered around Nicole to congratulate her, a message began to travel from person to person: We’re going to Siberia.
A career in this music can often feel like a form of self-imposed exile, and there was something fitting about a bunch of jazz singers insisting that we meet in Siberia.
But as it turns out, the Siberia in question was actually a dive bar in one of the most unexpected locations.
As I began to make some excuse about why I needed to go home, Janis gently guided me along with her, and that was that. I was in for whatever it was going to be.
Throughout my life there have been small moments of reckoning between childhood and adulthood. As I face down turning fifty later this year, there’s no question that youth is nothing more than a state of mind for me at this point.
Still, I still manage to feel like a kid sometimes. Especially because some of my most important relationships straddle the divide. People I knew as a child, who helped guide and encourage me, have become friends and contemporaries - and sometimes even the ones who pull me into the night, courting trouble and summoning adventure.
Janis Siegel, as I have learned, is one of those.
Siberia is located inside the 59th Street subway station.
We stepped over a couple of passed-out men on the stairs leading into the station, then dodged what one can only assume was some kind of cockroach rave, until we entered Turnstyle Market, a food court and market housed underground, and discovered the nearly empty bar, open until 4 a.m., blasting Michael Jackson and handing out a free beef jerky with every drink.
The place filled up with Nicole’s entourage and a steady stream of singers and musicians. Jazz vocal royalty in the bowels of the city.
The good news about a bar in the subway is that it’s a short walk to the train, and eventually we dragged ourselves out of there and made our way into the night.
As I sat alone on the subway back to Brooklyn, looking at a video on my phone of a recent rehearsal with my band, a young woman sitting next to me tapped me on the shoulder.
“Excuse me, is that you in the video singing?”
Turns out she was an aspiring singer and songwriter herself, and she asked me for some advice about how to launch her career and how to network.
The only thing I could think of was: “Go to Siberia.”
This Week on The Art of the Story
Coincidentally, I recently produced pieces for WBGO’s Art of the Story on both Janis Siegel (for her birthday) and New York Voices, as well as Tony Bennett (for what would have been his 100th birthday) and the vocal trio Duchess.
So jazz singers have very much been on my mind this week.
Putting on a Happy Face with Duchess
Vocal trio Duchess is back with A Marvelous Party, their first studio album in nearly a decade. I talked with Hilary Gardner, Amy Cervini and Melissa Stylianou about the long road back after the pandemic, the loss of the 55 Bar and the Jazz Standard, and how what began as a side project has quietly become the musical home they all return to.
Watch the full conversation:
Tony Bennett at 100
Tony Bennett would have turned 100 on August 3. Revisiting a 1992 conversation with WBGO's Michael Bourne, recorded just before his remarkable later-career resurgence, Bennett reflects on the songs, composers and jazz tradition that sustained him throughout more than seventy years as one of America's great interpreters.
Celebrating Janis Siegel
Revisiting two classic interviews with Janis, one from the Third Story podcast archive (recorded in 2015), and the other from my father’s Talking Jazz archive (recorded in 1985).
New York Voices: Where It All Began
As New York Voices prepares to retire after nearly forty years together, Darmon Meader looks back on the unlikely origins of one of jazz's defining vocal groups and the role WBGO played from the very beginning.
Tickets are on sale now for my 50th birthday concerts in Madison on October 23 and at Joe’s Pub in New York on November 27.
Upcoming Live Dates
August 17 — Dakota, Minneapolis (with Ben Sidran)
August 26–27 — North Street Cabaret, Madison (with Ben Sidran)
August 28–29 — Green Mill, Chicago (with Ben Sidran)
September 3 — Barbès, Brooklyn
October 23 — Bur Oak, Madison
October 24 — Taliesin, Spring Green (with Ben Sidran)
November 6–15 — Spain (with Leo & Leo)
November 27 — Joe’s Pub, New York
Anyway, that’s the week.
Talk to you soon,
Leo
Love this post. Thank you for being you! Got tickets for Nov 27!