Sunday night's Improvised Music Company's concert at JJ Smyth's marked the Dublin debut of jazz singer Andra Sparks. This long, narrow, smoke-filled room is hardly the kindest to singers, but Ms Sparks, seemingly unbothered by it, confirmed the fine impression made by her recently released first CD, People We Once Knew, suggesting that here may be a singer to watch.
With a quartet assembled for the concert, rather than a working group, a heavy reliance on more or less familiar standards - Love For Sale, I Thought About You, Cheek To Cheek, for example - was inevitable. The quartet - Phil Ware (keyboards), Hugh Buckley (guitar), Mike Quellin (bass) and John Wadham (drums) - handled them with professional aplomb, with Ware and Buckley in excellent form, both as soloists and in the sensitive accompaniment they offered the singer.
Ms Sparks has a lovely voice, with a resonant, full lower register, a warm middle register and only slight, occasional signs of strain at the top. She also knows how to use it effectively in a jazz context, something rare in a classically trained singer, taking musical liberties with line and time while retaining a respect for the meaning of the lyrics. Significantly, there was no sense of a change of idiom - always a giveaway - when the solos followed the vocals.
While faster tempos don't fully suit her - Cheek To Cheek seemed rushed, for instance - she is a superb interpreter of ballads, epitomised in a beautiful version of When Sunny Gets Blue. That and two other slow pieces, a gorgeous Kenny Wheeler/Norma Winstone original, Wintersweet, and an elegiac People We Once Knew by pianist Nick Weldon, both tricky pieces handled with impressive taste, confidence and intonation, were among the highlights of a good night's music.
