Teenage prodigy Andrea Motis, a product of Barcelona’s famous Sant Andreu youth jazz band and a newcomer unselfconsciously wearing star quality like a halo, plays London’s Pizza Express Jazz Club next week, belatedly launching the album she recorded at Barcelona gigs with mentor and saxist/bassist Joan Chamorro when she was 16. Motis has the kind of pearly, barely exhaled voice, paced with canny improv swerves and casual timing, from which jazz celebs are made. She also plays poised, straight-swing trumpet, and sounds childlike without capitalising on cuteness – most riskily on Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, a much-covered option full of slippery meanings, which she embraces with an awed yet expectant impatience (even if her English pronounciation adds mysteries to Cohen’s poetry that would probably fox even him). These 16 short tracks feature plenty of chugging mainstream swing, some floaty Astrud Gilberto-like samba, and two versions of Lover Man to which Motis imparts her own kind of fragile optimism. It’s minimally produced, breaks no rules, and student players mix with eloquent pros, like the accomplished Chamorro. (Billie Holiday’s dialogues with Lester Young clearly inspire theirs.) Its honesty should be a model for the glossier major-label handling of this remarkable arrival’s work, bound to follow.
