Her shining hour
Young jazz vocalist Sara Gazarek is on the way up. And you can catch her at Mercyhurst on Saturday night.
by John Chacona
Contributed photo
 Staring out from the cover of her CD with an old-soul gaze and stylishly careless hair, Sara Gazarek looks like the very picture of the new crop of alternative folk singers. And her voice, warm and intimate with unforced diction and a hint of girlish vulnerability, fits the bill.
Press the play button for Gazarek's debut CD, "Yours," and you'll be greeted not with chiming guitars and freshman-comp emotions, but with Harold Arlen's "My Shining Hour," taken at the exhilarating galloping tempo few musicians choose for this ballad.
John Coltrane was one, and if he was an inspiration for the 26-year-old native of the Pacific Northwest, so are four other vocalists she lists on her Web site, Kurt Elling, Bobby McFerrin, Nancy Wilson, and Ella Fitzgerald.
Sara Gazarek is a jazz singer, one of the many who seek to claim our attention in the wake of Norah Jones' surprise commercial success. Not all will make it to their second CD (a milestone Gazarek has reached with the recent release of a live date recorded at Los Angeles' Jazz Bakery).
Even in a fickle business, Gazarek, who will perform with her trio at Mercyhurst College on Saturday, has the makings of a survivor.
At 23 and a jazz performance major at the University of Southern California, Gazarek was given the student music award for outstanding collegiate jazz vocalist by Downbeat magazine. A spot on the Concord Jazz Festival Tour with jazz singers Karrin Allyson and Diane Schuur and gospel and jazz vocalist Oleta Adams quickly followed.
Gazarek's career was kicked off at the tempo of "My Shining Hour." The song -- and her approach to it -- is instructive.
Like most young, attractive jazz singers these days, Gazarek sings her share of material with roots in the singer-songwriter branch of the rock tree, and as many young jazz singers are likely to cite the influence of Joni Mitchell as of Fitzgerald.
But the best songs on "Yours" are the old standards, and not all of them done at the energetic clip where Fitzgerald for one was at her best. Gazarek finds a hallucinatory tempo for Cole Porter's great "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" and does not shrink from the fevered hormonal impulses behind his "All or Nothing At All." How many of the Norah wannabes can -- or would -- do that?
It helps that Gazarek's backing trio -- Erik Kertes on bass, Josh Nelson on piano, and Matt Slocum on drums -- are on the same page, young and energetic but also well-schooled. They're nicely matched, to one another as well as to Gazarek.
Is Sara Gazarek bound for stardom? Unless tastes (or the direction of her career) change dramatically, I'm not sure any vocalist as steeped in jazz as Gazarek is can ever be a star in the pop sense. But she's clearly a singer of accomplishment and promise.
After leaving Erie, she heads to New York's storied Blue Note club (where the club sodas cost $10). You have a chance to hear her right here.
On the way up.
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Jazz Vocalist Sara Gazarek will perform Saturday at 8 p.m. at Mercyhurst College's Walker Recital Hall. Tickets are $20, $17.50 for seniors and students, $7.50 for youths, and are available by calling the box office, 824-3000. For More Information on Sara Gazarek, visit the Web site www.saragazarek.com.
John Chacona, an Erie writer, is a contributor to Coda and Signal To Noise magazines. His blog on music and culture, "let's call this," is at www.johnchacona.com.
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