Tina Harrod
Worksongs
(Vitamin Records)

Rating: ****

By John McBeath

Unusually for a jazz-flavoured work this album has received
considerable publicity and airplay, for several reasons. Shortly after this recording, Sydney vocalist Tina Harrod’s musical and life partner, highly acclaimed musician Jackie Orszaczky, lost his battle with cancer in February 2008. Together Harrod and Orszaczky were the formidable vocal front of Orszaczky’s renowned soul group The Grandmasters from the late nineties. Since 2002 Harrod has been concentrating more on a jazz repertoire, working live and perfecting her integration with pianist Matt McMahon’s masterly trio who do much more than simply provide a backing on this, their first recording together. The album is beautifully recorded and mixed, an exquisite production.

From the opening track, Stevie Wonder’s Big Brother, premonitory piano chords over Hamish Stuart’s elegantly ringing cymbals, grounded by the deep moan of Jonathon Zwartz’s bass, announce a rich musicality, even before Harrod’s voice arrives. When it does, her strong contralto leaps into the song with the force of a blow to the abdomen. It’s the power of Nina Simone with the expression of Billie Holiday, yet Harrod’s individuality is never compromised; these past great singers are influences, not models to be copied. Later in the song as she moves in graduated steps into the upper register, there are reflections of Aretha Franklin. McMahon’s piano solo holds the mood perfectly while bass and drums underscore, support, and embellish with quick-thinking intelligence.

While Orszaczky does not appear on Harrod’s album, he was present for the recording, and two of the couple’s compositions are included. One
of these, Such a Long Way Home tells the story of Harrod’s childhood in New Zealand featuring an insistent bass groove and her chorus of
scat as the song builds and builds to its exultant climax.

I Love You Porgy from Porgy and Bess demonstrates Harrod’s range and interpretive feeling while revealing the important component of fragility, the
desirable modulation of her forcefulness.

The album concludes with the ballad Don’t Explain, a tribute to composer Billie Holiday, delivered with consummate timing, an aching
understanding of its love-betrayed lyrics, and pitch perfect tonality. This album fixes Tina Harrod’s position as a foremost jazz vocalist who has developed a superb musical combination.

This review first appeared in The Weekend Australian and is republished with permission.

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Tina Harrod
Worksongs
(Vitamin Records)

By John Shand

Having firmly established herself as one of Australia’s premier soul singers, Tina Harrod runs a risk when turning to jazzier material. She could join the long list of almosts and abject failures. But there’s a crucial difference between Harrod and most of her wannabe peers: she pours herself — every inch, sinew and synapse — into the songs, so the words throb with commitment rather than shudder with pretence.

‘Round Midnight is the big test. The apotheosis of the jazz ballad, it leaves nowhere to hide, so any singer failing to fully grapple with its genius and potency is left floundering. Harrod gives you goosebumps. It’s as if she’s singing about the last night of life, stretching vowels for telling timbral effect and sometimes letting her voice crack like a mirror held up to the soul.

This, her second album, begins with a much less convincing performance on Stevie Wonder’s Big Brother, despite exceptional playing from her band (pianist Matt McMahon, bassist Jonathan Zwartz and drummer Hamish Stuart). The real work begins with Comes Love, when she shows she can not only emote and be sassy at the same time but that she also knows how to drape the phrasing over the pulse so there is no sense of gravity. Some singers never get that.

Then she springs a surprise with Nick Drake’s sad, dreamy River Man. The acoustic guitar and strings of the original give way to a rolling drum figure played with mallets, which is widened by the bass, and then flecked with piano, while Harrod lilts across the top. It’s a superb change of mood, a process continued when she digs into the bluesy glissandos of Feelin’ Good, a piece, like the rollicking CC Rider, straight from her comfort zone.

Read the full review on the SMH website.

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Hash Varsani is the owner of The Jazz Directory, a network of sites related to jazz, travel and everything else he loves. He also runs a selection of jazz related sites including Jazz Club Jury, a jazz club and festival review site. Check out his Google+ Profile, to see what else he's up to...probably setting up another website from one of his many passions.

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