Is any form of music demonstrably worse than jazz scatting? The overwhelming majority of perpetrators inflicting nonsense syllables on listeners are unknowing musical vandals. As has been the case throughout most of her unconventional career, esperanza spalding (stylization hers) is different.
On “Loro,” a track on her new album with pianist Fred Hersch, spalding mocks scat even as she demonstrates how the form can be expressed with rare finesse and elite musicality. Some observers are likely to hail Alive at the Village Vanguard as a welcome return to mainstream jazz for Spalding. Not me. I respected her recent explorations of funky art music, even as I was disappointed spalding never attained the heights achieved by the likes of Meshell Ndegeocello.
Hersch matches spalding’s incandescence on the spare voice-and-piano album recorded in 2018. The Thelonious Monk tributes “Dream of Monk” and “Evidence” capture the erratic spirit of the jazz giant. The heart-rending ballads “Some Other Time” and “A Wish” are countered by the duo’s cerebral frolicking on “Little Suede Shoes” and “Girl Talk” on the early album-of-the-year candidate Shoo-be-doo-bee, be-bop blam!