© -Steven
Cerra , copyright protected; all rights reserved.
“Norma Winstone is one of the
great jazz vocalists not simply because she is so obviously accomplished in
what she does, but the sheer range of her singing embraces everything the jazz
vocalist can be called upon to do. Yet no single aspect of jazz singing can be
said to be central to her style; she is an interpreter of the American Popular
Song par excellence, but she is not a standards singer; she can scat
masterfully but she is not a scat singer and she is a brilliantly imaginative
free jazz singer but she is not a free jazz musician. Her sight-reading skills
have frequently been harnessed to provide a wordless tone color in both small
groups and large ensembles; she has explored vocalese; she has worked with
electronics and she has explored abstraction and collective improvisation with
singers Urzula Dudziak and Jay Clayton (and later Michele Hendricks) in Vocal
Summit. She has sung with unusual combinations of instruments and she has sung
with orchestras and big bands and she has sung a cappella. Whatever
the context, her performances have been both distinguished and distinctive.
Much has been written about
the voice-as-an-instrument, but in Norma Winstone’s case, it is fair to say she
is a brilliantly imaginative jazz musician whose instrument is her voice. Her
style represents one of the first independent developments of jazz vocal
technique beyond the borders of the United
States
- Stuart Nicholson for Jazz.com
“Norma Winstone’s voice is
one of the great glories of contemporary Jazz.”
- The Jazz Journal
Had it not been
for a mate in England Dave Brubeck’s In Your Own Sweet Way, I might never have known about Norma Winstone.
What a real
tragedy that would have been. As it was, I had over thirty plus years of
catching up to do, but mercifully, Norma has her own website – www.normawinstone.com – and the
details of her Jazz journey are all laid out there for others to follow.
And to add to my
blessings, not only did this internet friend point out that Norma had sung –
sung, mind you! – an adaptation of Dave ’s Jazz classic In Your Own Sweet Way, he generously sent me a copy of the long
since out-of-print album that this music appeared on – Norma Winstone in Concert With
John Taylor [ENO 1].
Recorded in
performance before a musically discerning audience at the Guildhall School of Music
in August, 1988, the album is an incredible tour de force by both artists.
“She has her own
way with a song;” “she is a song stylist;” “she is in the traditional of the
great, female Jazz vocalists:” somehow none of these descriptive phrases seem
apt when applied to Norma.
Perhaps a better
way to state it would be that Norma is an excellent musician who just happens
to express herself with voice as her instrument.
Excellence as a
musician is not unique to Norma, Carmen [McCrae], Sassy [Sarah Vaughan] and
Blossom [Dearie], among others, were all first-rate pianists as well as
vocalists.
But Norma’s
singing doesn’t come from the piano, it seems to reflect all of the major
elements of music: melody, harmony, rhythm and texture with a primary emphasis on
the latter.
Norma uses the
human voice to bring a variety of sonorities to her Jazz vocals.
She sings as
thought she was an arranger: one minute bringing the timbre of the brass
section into play and, with the next phrase, emphasizing the sounds that reeds
and woodwinds might make.
Norma reconstructs
a song by altering the “feel” of the tune through her use of multifarious sounds.
“One of the things
that makes Winstone so exceptional as a singer is her equal confidence with
pure abstraction as with the most straight-forward vocal line. … Like Karin
Krog in Norway
To afford you an
opportunity to listen to this “magisterial singer” with pianist John Taylor’s
thoughtful accompaniment, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles developed
the following video tribute to Norma on which, you may not be surprised to
learn, she and John perform Dave Brubeck’s In Your Own Sweet
Way.
