Feb. 12--Through either a glorious fluke of programming or rather ingenious planning, or both, three unusually charismatic male jazz singers will be serenading the Chicago area this Valentine's Day weekend.
That's a remarkable confluence of talent considering the decline of male jazz vocals over the past several decades. The golden era when masters such as Frank Sinatra, Nat "King" Cole, Johnny Hartman, Billy Eckstine, Cab Calloway, Joe Williams, Mel Torme, Louis Armstrong and others set the jazz world's vocal standard has long since ended. Tony Bennett and Freddy Cole (Nat's brother), still swing joyously well into their 80s, but they're among the last of the great survivors, reminding us of what once was.
And though brilliant young jazz trumpeters, pianists, saxophonists, bassists and drummers are plentiful these days, comparably gifted male singers remain in short supply. Bobby McFerrin, at 64, transcends all genre and category, but jazz surely is at the core of his art, and he still performs busily and at a characteristically high level.
But the talent pool shrinks when you move down into to the next generation or two. The reasons are open to debate, but surely the economics of jazz have something to do with it. In a music that has been largely marginalized by American popular culture, opportunities for performance and recording have narrowed, yet they're certainly more ample for instrumentalists -- who can play in a variety of bands and contexts -- than for singers.
All of which helps explain why this is a notable weekend for jazz singing. Perhaps because the male jazz balladeer always has signified romance to one degree or another, Chicago-area programmers booked three of them in far-flung venues, giving listeners a chance to hear more first-rate vocals in a single weekend than one might otherwise expect to encounter in a month or more.
Gregory Porter stands unchallenged as the best male jazz singer under 50, his luxuriant baritone, adroit scat singing and seductive songwriting making him a triple-threat artist. When he played the Chicago Jazz Festival in 2013, he turned in one of the most gripping performances of the entire event, bringing a degree of intimacy to the spacious Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park that one might not have thought possible.
Better still, Porter spanned a vast range of musical expression, from the narrative nature of "On My Way to Harlem" to the incantations of "No Love Dying" to the church-inspired testifying of "Liquid Spirit." Here was vivid proof that Porter recordings such as "Liquid Spirit" (2013) and "Be Good" (2012), strong as they were, only hinted at what he's capable of achieving in concert (in many cases, the reverse is true, singers proving far less effective on stage than engineers were able to make them sound in the studio).
This time around, Porter will perform in much closer quarters, in an indoor concert space that will give listeners the chance to savor the nuances of the singer's richly textured instrument.
3 p.m. Sunday in the McAninch Arts Center at the College of DuPage, Fawell and Park Boulevards, Glen Ellyn; $49-$59; 630-942-4000 or atthemac.org
Paul Marinaro has been singing steadily in Chicago since moving here from Buffalo in 2003, but it wasn't until he released his stunning debut album, "Without a Song," in 2013, that a wide audience started paying attention. For good reason. The brilliantly produced, sumptuously sung album amounted to a heartfelt salute to Marinaro's father, Joseph, who had aspired to become a jazz singer but saw his career sidelined by family responsibilities. The younger Marinaro included on the CD excerpts of his father's self-made, 78-r.p.m. recordings of long ago, and it's impossible not to be moved to hear these two generations of singers communing across time and space through the standard repertoire.
Even beyond that dramatic device and the emotional appeal of the recording, Marinaro lures audiences with the radiance of his baritone, the elegance of his phrasing and, above all, his deep awareness of the meaning of a lyric.
8 and 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 4, 8 and 10 p.m. Sunday; at the Jazz Showcase, 806 S. Plymouth Court; $20-$35; 312-360-0234 or jazzshowcase.com
Saalik Ziyad is best known in Chicago for his work with experimental artists, particularly those of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). Indeed, Ziyad improvised compellingly alongside his father, Taalib-Din Ziyad, and the AACM's Great Black Music Ensemble at the Englewood Jazz Festival in 2013.
But Ziyad also can convey the essence of a romantic ballad quite well, as he proved during the Chicago Jazz Festival in 2012. Duetting with Chicago singer Sarah Marie Young in the venerable "Teach Me Tonight," Ziyad's plush lines persuaded Young to temporarily desist from the screaming that marked much of the rest of her set, no small feat.
Ziyad will sing a tribute to Johnny Hartman with saxophonist Juli Wood's Chicago Calling band, featuring pianist Leandro Lopez Varady, bassist Harrison Bankhead and drummer Avreeayl Ra, 7:30 to 11:30 p.m. Sunday in a session presented by the non-profit Hyde Park Jazz Society at Room 43, 1043 E. 43d St.; $10; hydeparkjazzsociety.com.
Also worth hearing
Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra: 8 p.m. Friday; Jazz for Young People concert at 1 p.m. Saturday; and 8 p.m. Sunday; Orchestra Hall at Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave.; prices vary; 312-294-3000 or cso.org
Tigran Hamasyan Trio: 7:30 p.m. Friday at the University of Chicago's Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St.; $35; 773-702-2787 or chicagopresents.uchicago.edu
Atomic: 9:30 p.m. Friday at Constellation, 3111 N. Western Ave.; $15; constellation-chicago.com
hreich@tribpub.com
"Portraits in Jazz": Howard Reich's e-book collects his exclusive interviews with Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald and others, as well as profiles of early masters such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday. Get "Portraits in Jazz" and chicagotribune.com/ebooks.
