Jessy J at Daniel Street, Fourplay at the Blue Note August 2, 2011

Last week, my friend–blogger, graphic artist, and author Katherine Gilraine–attended four jazz shows.  For my post, we’ll focus on two of the shows.

First up is Jessy J at the Daniel Street club in Milford, Connecticut, last Friday.  (6/22/12 UPDATE: Daniel Street closed six months later.)  Jessy’s band featured Jay Rowe, another friend of mine, on keyboards.  K.G. writes in part (with links added by me):

… Out came Jessy on the alto, and out came Dizzy [Gillespie]’s Tin Tin Deo, and immediately, I saw that she has made leaps and bounds in her stage presence. She danced, she played to her audience, she back-and-forthed masterfully with Rohn Lawrence and Carl Carter, and she made it clear from the first thirty seconds that she was very much into the music that she was playing. The show quickly became a showcase as she went to the mic and got to singing – Mas Que Nada, mind you, is a favorite of mine – and commandeered a party through a Gloria Estefan cover. Granted, I’m no Gloria Estefan fan by any stretch of the imagination, but Jessy knew how to incorporate it into her style. There was no one with her on stage who wasn’t equally involved in the overall dynamic, and the audience was just as into her music as she was. …

Jessy has a new album coming out the day after Labor Day, Hot Sauce.

K.G. had this to say about the Fourplay show:

If Bob James or Chuck Loeb come to the Blue Note, I’m very sure that you will find me in the audience. If Bob James and Chuck Loeb are at the Blue Note, so is every Fourplay fan in New York City.

No, really.

… [Let’s Touch the Sky] was the focal point of the Blue Note show, and I saw how New York Attitude on guitar worked its way into the (admittedly) smooth dynamic of Fourplay. If you want to hear a great example of it, check out 3rd Degree. Written by Chuck in a tribute of himself being the third guitarist in the Fourplay lineup, it’s classic Loeb indeed: sharp, gritty, and almost toeing the line of rocker guitar, but not quite there. At the Note, this was a crowd-pleaser, right along Nathan East‘s voice on I’ll Still Be Loving You. …

You can read Katherine’s full recap here.