Alto saxophonist Jaleel Shaw blew the audience away when he closed the show on the opening night Friday of the CIBC FirstCaribbean Sugar Isle Jazz Festival. But the evening got off to a swinging start with the Haitian American Pauline Jean.
Jean’s presence, as well as her voice, is going to capture you from the first note. Beautiful and powerful, it has been compared to those of Cassandra Wilson, Nina Simone and Sarah Vaughn. There is some truth to those comparisons. Pauline takes the best of all these amazing singers: the tone of Cassandra Wilson, the energy of Nina Simone and the feeling of Sarah Vaughn. But there’s a difference in Pauline’s music; being of Haitian descent, she sings in English, French and Creole. And with her first song she transformed Frank Collymore Hall into a dusky, smoky room somewhere down in Louisiana, Baton Rouge.
There’s no doubt Pauline and her band can swing. While she allowed her songs to thrill, the band’s individual arrangements with Elio Villafranca on piano, Shirazette Tinnin on drums (she’s part of Beyonce’s backup band) and Johnathan Michele on bass went back and forth from funky to traditional jazz.
If Pauline is good in the swinging tracks, she is even better singing ballads, with lovely and soulful renditions of Haitian folkore, featuring Wongolo which she says is near and dear to her heart. In this song, in her native tongue, you could hear the passion, power and pride in her voice.
Her bubbliest best
What is scintillating is if Jean sang without the music, you would get the same effect, as her voice has this melodious tone, and she invokes hornlike sounds, with shades of tones and phrasings that go well beyond just singing the lyrics.
Also with Panama M’ Tombe, a satire about a Haitian politician and his hat, she was at her bubbliest best, engaging and energetic, dancing around the stage, taking you on an emotional ride. Each rendition was met with enthusiastic applause, and when she got into the scatting part of her songs, her doo wops and dippity doo-dahs, her versatility has no limit.
Pauline recently toured Russia, where she was the first vocalist/arranger to perform Afro-Haitian jazz. The Russian Press wrote: “When Pauline appeared on stage, the energy was just an extraordinary force. Owner of incredible voice . . . it was she who showed a new approach to classic jazz, by adding elements of Afro-Haitian music.”
Pauline holds a Bachelor in Music in vocal performance from the Berklee College of Music.
Shaw, a fiery young player, also a graduate of Berklee, reveals an awesome control and command of the alto saxophone. He has an elegant playing ability with seductive melodicism.
With his eyes tightly closed and veins bulging in his bald dome, he started blowing at 9:30 p.m. and the audience first heard his voice at 9:56 p.m. They realized that his deep baritone matched his playing. Backed by jazz musician Eric McPherson on drums, Boris Koslov on bass, and 23-year-old Master In Arts student at Manhattan School of Music, Christian Sands, on piano, they segued from I Wish I Didn’t Know into Chromo, and a musical arrangement by Sands of rap band Outkast’s Prototype.
With crescendos from the drums, the heavy twang from the strings, and the phrasing and trilling on the keys from Sands, whose fingers were a blur, the band flowed seamlessly into each arrangement. At 10:42 the show came to an end with the fitting gospel number Faith, written by Shaw.
Sounding like an old Negro spiritual, the melodies rolled like waves, ascending skyward, only to come crashing down on the heads of the small crowd. Patrons would be sent home feeling blessed to be a part of this musical treat.