Kate McGarry In San Francisco

As part of the San Francisco Jazz Spring Season 2012, Kate McGarry and her band mates made an appearance at the Swedish American Hall, 2174 Market Street, San Francisco, California on April 20, 2012 for an 8:00 P. M. performance. McGarry was accompanied by Keith Gantz - guitar; Gary Verace - organ; Clarence Penn - drums & percussion.

Song Stylist Kate McGarry

Considering that the Swedish American Hall is not ideally equipped acoustically for music concerts of the type that McGarry and the band performed, the show was well attended and impressive. Judging from the reaction of the audience, who were attentive and engaged throughout the show, McGarry and her band should feel very gratified with their performance and reception. In spite of the venue's obvious shortcomings, they took the show forward as consummate professionals must.

I observed Keith Gantz on several occasions work to get the right sound and balance for his guitar, and somehow always managed  to achieve the results he wanted. Clarence Penn was the ultimate percussionist, I hesitate to say "drummer," because on this night, he astutely, nimbly, modulated his attack from cat's paw-like shimmerings of sound, to thunderous explosions of rhythm that best suited the mood and the Hall's physical features; he is a show all by himself that is pregnant with animation and glorious expressions of boundless energy. His conversations with McGarry in the jazz idiom were priceless. McGarry wonderfully controlled the energy level and direction of the evening's entertainment, completely captivating the room so disarmingly, that she admitted at one point feeling as though "...she was up here (on stage), and down there (in the crowd) with you." Gary Versace's organ enjoyed the most perfect fit of all in the Chapel-like acoustics. Overall, collective, peerless musicianship prevailed, and a performance worthy in quality, content, execution and style of any night at Carnegie Hall, or Lincoln Center overtook the Swedish American Hall in San Francisco.

Guitarist Keith Gantz

McGarry and the band performed most of the songs on their CD "Girl Talk" with the same (I'm tempted to say identical) emotional magic, conspicuous glow, deep feeling and joy stored on the CD. Starting with the Henry Mancini/Johnny Mercer evergreen "Charade," the group then swung through "I Just Found Out About Love," behind one of the night's many fine Versace organ solos. In the absence of Kurt Elling, McGarry took on "O Cantador," explaining first that it was a tune she liked singing alone, and was a song about a singer who must go to a different place each day and sing songs chosen by life, about love, joy, life and death. This set the mood for one of the tunes enthusiastically received by the audience, the lamentable "We Kiss In A Shadow."  But it was the "wrist slasher" (McGarry's term), "The Man I Love" with its roiling, tortured lyric of 'waiting' and 'longing,' and its deeply sentimental ending that seemed to get to the room at its deepest emotional level. However, McGarry's deliberate, charmingly wised up and deliciously hip rendition of the CDs title track "Girl Talk," emboldened by a great Keith Gantz guitar solo, and another Versace organ gem, really got under the skin of the audience in a way that they could easily relate.

Somehow McGarry found the energy and enthusiasm, after a gruelling cross-country flight to San Francisco, to perform such an extended program, which also included two songs sung in Portuguese. A deeply emotional song on which she was accompanied by Gantz's beautiful solo guitar. She treated the audience to "Ten Little Indians" a song she wrote about her childhood and remembrances of her parents. A folk song written by a friend who "had a decision to make," also was sung, plus one of James Taylor's compositions (which she has not recorded yet), called "Lines."  For good measure, she reached into Harry Warren's wonderful songbook and pulled out  his poignant, "This Heart of Mine." She also found time for Cole Porter's swinging "Get Out Of Town," a real crowd pleaser.

  

Organist Gary Versace

McGarry moves easily, almost nonchalantly, between the folk, pop and jazz genres, an as she does, she uses her body language and the microphone deftly to draw both the audience and her band mates into her performance. She relates to her audience like a good lover; direct, reassuring, humorous, never predictable, and always with a smiling comeback that speaks to the heart. It is striking not only to hear her sing, but to actually see how she sings; how she effortlessly negotiates her pitch range with faultless intonation; not faltering or careening out of her depth; always finding ways to turn words and phrases with delightful surprise.



Drummer/percussionist
Clarence Penn



Today's CD recordings arrive with all the requisites for enjoyment "cooked" in: Excitement, suspense, tension and release, ambiance, mood changes, modulated tempi, energy, fantastic aural colors, to name some. Whatever needs to be added to the experience can be done digitally by enterprising, imaginative recording engineers, producers, mixers, and technicians. This has conditioned the music lover to expect a mirror-copy of the CD from live performances. In some music genres, artists resort to elaborate pyrotechnics, noisy distractions and down right musical legerdemain (lip-syncing) to bridge this gap. Not so the folk or jazz artist, they must live or die inside of that 'cruel space' that extends between the microphone and the audience. Many artists can paint the pictures, and tell the stories in that space that induce excitement and festive gaiety, but few possess the 'tools' to explain the meaning of the stories they tell, or the pictures they paint: the meaning of the art form they represent, the art itself; of love; of 'the blues'; of life. Kate McGarry is one of the rare artists who brings to her performance, the passion and the will to reveal that meaning in word, song and deed.