COURTESY OF THE HAWAII INTERNATIONAL JAZZ FESTIVAL
On her new album "Something Cool," Tierney Sutton sings some of the most sensuous, involving music of her career that tears at the heart about love lost, love that is and love to be.
So it's a bit of a surprise when the jazz singer from the San Fernando Valley in California (by way of Milwaukee, Wisc.) bellows over the phone that "people are gonna say this girl has cajones" when they hear her new Frank Sinatra tribute CD of ballads to be released in February 2004.
"So what was I thinking! Am I out of my freaking mind!" says Sutton, who makes her Honolulu debut Friday at the Blaisdell Concert Hall for the Hawaii International Jazz Festival.
But there is a sound reason for her self-described lunacy.
"His ballads are sublime, amazing but also under-recorded and obscure," she said. "I didn't sing them the way he did them. That would be way too freaky ... and not so smart."
Sutton came to jazz as a teenager who tired of singing pop songs because, she says, "they didn't seem sincere to me." This Russian language major at Wesleyan University was 19 when she got hooked on jazz's rich harmonies.
"I started listening to Miles, Sarah Vaughan, John Coltrane and Nancy Wilson and became so inspired by the standards," she said.
But singing those songs had potential consequences.
"The biggest challenge for a young jazz performer is standing up to the expectations that went before," Sutton said. "Recording a song that Ella did is very scary."
On scholarship at Boston's Berklee College of Music, she performed throughout New England, opening for Max Roach and the Billy Taylor Trio at the Bright Moments of Jazz Fest, at national jazz festivals and European gigs. These days, Tierney sings with both the quintet and big band led by trumpet great Buddy Childers. A versatile studio singer, she also sings on several film and television soundtracks, as well as in television ads for BMW and Coca-Cola.
å SUTTON'S six-year-old son was born before her first recording was released.
"My husband is so great; he made me finish the album when I was five months pregnant," she said. "He told me that when I had the baby, I wouldn't finish the CD, so he basically insisted I get it done before. He was right."
Her first solo album, "Introducing Tierney Sutton," was nominated for a 1999 Indie Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album. That same year, she signed with the Telarc Jazz label.
On her label debut, "Unsung Heroes," Sutton took popular jazz standards commonly recognized as instrumentals -- such as Clifford Brown's "Joy Spring," Wayne Shorter's "Speak No Evil" and Dizzy Gillespie's "Con Alma" -- and recorded them with vocals.
Tierney's second Telarc project, "Blue in Green," was music written by or associated with the late pianist and close friend Bill Evans.
"Something Cool" includes several adventurous tracks, such as a swinging rendition of "Route 66," Lerner and Loewe's "Wouldn't It Be Loverly," Willie Nelson's "Crazy" and a fresh arrangement of "Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead."
"A lot of people haven't been exposed to jazz," Sutton says. "My favorite thing after a concert is when someone tells me 'I really don't like jazz at all, but I liked this.'
"It's sort of like atheists who got that way because of some fanatical religious zealot. I don't believe in the God (that religious zealots) believe in either."
But jazz can be confounding to some audiences because the music demands "something from the listener," she said.
"When you're doing a repertoire, the serious jazz person is listening as a participant because they have taken the journey before," Sutton said.
For those new jazz travelers Sutton always includes "DNA songs" in her concerts.
"These are songs everyone knows, although they don't even know they know them, like 'Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead!'" she said. "There's no way people cannot have an experience with that song. If you can suck them in with 'Ding Dong ... ,' then you've earned the right to put in a Bill Evans piece, because you've set the stage.
"I've built a bridge to make it easy for the audience to walk across."
Tierney Sutton
The "Guitar Magic & Vocal Jazz" concert is part of the 10th Annual Hawaii International Jazz Festival:
at the Jazz FestOn stage: 7 to 9 p.m. Friday
Place: Blaisdell Concert Hall
Tickets: $20, $35 and $40
Call: 591-2211 or 526-4400
Click for online
calendars and events.
