Bridgewater's symphony-seasoned standards channel Ella

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Jazz fest fans were treated to the voice and expressive faces of Dee Dee Bridgewater Thursday night. (KAZ ZYSK / JAZZ WINNIPEG FESTIVAL)

There was a lot of Ella and Kurt in the air Thursday night as singer Dee Dee Bridgewater took the stage with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra to close out the Jazz Winnipeg Festival mainstage concert series.

That is Ella as in Fitzgerald and Kurt as in Weill as Bridgewater embraced the maxim, stick to the standards.

The pairing of the award-winning singer with a symphony orchestra was a mixed blessing.

Bill Strayhorn's classic Lush Life was made for, dare I say it, lush strings behind Bridgewater's beautiful voice.

And Midnight Sun from Bridgewater's Dear Ella CD, which provided many of the selections in her set list, was another number that cried out for the melding of rhythm section and orchestra.

The Weill ballad My Ship was well-sung, but the strings soaring during the bass solo was a little too precious. There's the old joke about the audience talking during bass solos; now you can add strings playing.

Weill's best-known pieces, Mack the Knife (Moritat), fared better with the bass opening the tune as Bridgewater snapped her fingers in time with audience members joining in. Not only does Bridgewater channel Miss Ella, she does a bang-on gravel-voiced Louis Armstrong.

Come Sunday, from Duke Ellington's Sacred Concerts (originally sung by Mahalia Jackson) was a strikingly beautiful piece that benefited from orchestral help.

A couple of movie themes -- The Shadows of Your Smile, from The Sandpiper, and The Way We Were -- were well-done, familiar to the audience, but movie music nonetheless.

Bridgewater was her jazziest with Slow Boat to China and Bye Bye Blackbird, sung with just a quartet.

Slow Boat include some good solo work by pianist Michelle Grégoire and tenor saxophonist Paul Balcain, who traded phrases with Bridgewater as she stood beside him onstage and scatted. Blackbird was the first song Bridgewater sang with the vaunted Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra at the Village Vanguard in 1970 and she treats it lovingly.

The singer has an easy way with the audience, telling stories of her husbands (3) and children (3) and doing a little playful flirting with WSO conductor Alexander Mickelthwate. She even incorporated it into Stormy Monday when she sang of having the blues "after Alexander told me he's married."

The musicianship was great, the song choice good for the most part, but the show tried to be too many things. It jumped from the very jazzy numbers with the quartet to expansive pieces with orchestral backing and back, and forth. While each piece may have been satisfying, the whole just didn't quite make it.

The Jazz Winnipeg Festival wraps up this weekend with free shows Saturday and Sunday in Old Market Square

chris.smith@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 4, 2009 C5