ANY DAY FOR ALICE
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The 'First Lady of Jazz' gives magical twists to the classics and the obscurities
One of the great things about listening to Alice Day sing – as you can do right now at the Sheraton Grande Sukhumvit’s Living Room – is hearing how beautifully she melds the phrasing and tone of Billie Holiday, Mahalia Jackson and other greats of the past.
Day picked up those influences while growing up in a gospel family in Miami, Florida. She forged her own distinctive style from them, though, and is acknowledged as one of the finest jazz vocalists performing today.
“I started singing professionally when I was 13,” Day tells us. “I was very young but, then again, if you’re pointed in the right direction, what stops you?”
“Alice Day is a Renaissance woman,” Jazz entrepreneur Frank Spena once wrote. “She has the ability to mesmerise and captivate an audience with her stage presence. Whether singing an intimate ballad or a raucous, belting blues, there ain’t nobody does it better.”
Affectionately known as “the First Lady of Jazz”, Day has developed her own unique style despite the usual strictures of jazz articulation, embracing its emotions and improvisation instead.
She’s in demand at top venues around the world and has won numerous plaudits, including the Cultural Ambassador’s Award and the Key to the City of Miami. She’s also in the South Florida Jazz Hall of Fame.
Her live repertoire, she says, is mostly beloved classics from the so-called Great American Songbook.
“By saying that I mean the standards. I do requests on occasion – sometimes.
“I work with a band and if someone in the band doesn’t know it, we can’t do it. Although we might fake something together and try to make it work. And if the audience recognises it, then we’ll go through it!”
Playful and witty, Day holds the audience’s attention not so much with her powerful voice as with her light-hearted and exploratory approach to the more obscure numbers.
Day has been coming to Thailand to perform for nearly a decade. She had a go at singing some tunes in Thai early on, but the language barrier just had her cluttering up songs with any Thai word she knew. These days she sticks to the standards she knows well, the ones the fans are always delighted to hear.
Asked if she gets to explore the local music scene, Day sighs. “I work six days a week and I mostly hang out in my room!
“Ten years ago there was more happening – not just in Bangkok but everywhere in the world. Back then if you go two doors down there’d be jazz playing in either direction.
“There are still places you can go after hours, but it’s not the kind of music I want to hear. I don’t get house and hip-hop – they’re not bad things but they’re not my things.
“You know,” she adds wistfully, “when you get off work late, you’re so hyped up you want to hear some good music. People get together to unwind and play music. They jam. And that keeps the music alive.”
DAY AT NIGHT
See Alice Day and the Shawn Kelly Trio through January 15 in the Living Room at the Sheraton Grande Sukhumvit.
The hotel is near the Asoke Skytrain and Sukhumvit subway stations.
Find out more at (02) 649 8353 or www.EatDrinkAndMore.com.
