Nobody's Business Trio

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                      The superb musicianship and refined musical sensibilities of Nobody's Business Trio, were on display at the fabled Iridium June 27,2012. If you like The Andrews Sisters, The McGuire Sisters or Manhattan Transfer, you will surely  find yourself enthralled and dazzled by this  thoroughly winsome trio. They specialize in taking familiar material and revitalizing it through uncanny harmonies that dance, dart and soar, as if they have been choreographed by a master, as indeed they have;

Phil Hall, the musical director and fierce pianistic intelligence, whose Broadway credits are far too extensive to enumerate here, led the supporting instrumentalists.  

Jack Spicer, on stand-up bass, unleashed a steady stream of intense sinewy, yet somehow understated, lines  that  provided  a sense of mystery and severity to perfectly compliment the more open hearted, vocal directness of the singers. The masterful Marion Felder, another stellar musician whose star-studded list of credits from widely disparate genres would require an essay in itself, supported the trio in ways one wishes other drummers would emulate. The interaction between Phil Hall and Marion Felder was particularly impressive on "Bye Bye Blackbird," imparting  a stuttering urgency to a tune one would have thought utterly impossible to imaginatively  reinterpret at this late date.

The spirited, unfailingly witty patter reached a peak with the appearance of Director Kevin McGlynn's outlandish Easter Bonnets, confected of God-knows-what, with brims the circumference, it seemed, of Columbus Circle. The hats performed ably during a frolicsome and heartwarming version of "Easter Parade," a song I was prepared to resist on principle (although what principle I don't know), which won me over by avoiding the maudlin sentimentality that would have been natural for it  to succumb to.               

But it is the marvelous blend of voices that makes the show a must-see for all lovers of The Great American Songbook. The trio masterfully captured the essence of so many styles of pop-jazz-Broadway and even Country  harmonizing, that one longed to hear them attempt, simply as a demonstration of their imperial reach and ferociously unlimited abilities, a Swingle Singers version of a Classical piece. There's no doubt in my mind that they would accomplish this with aplomb.

The power and beauty of their weave of voices is made possible by the richness of their individual gifts. Alecia Evans'  powerful soprano soared on "Summertime," without losing any of its expressive fullness, as it traversed  the outer reaches of the musical netherworlds high above the staff. Her vibrancy and vocal virtuosity were apparent throughout. Cadden Jones struts and vamps like the Broadway star that she is destined to be. As a singer, she has a particularly enviable command of the lower register. The rich warm tones and emotional shadings she rings from these strategically deployed  sensual, echo-like, almost cavernous jolts of feeling, were especially effective on "Fever," and give her singing the sought after stamp of uniqueness that eludes many vocalists. Linda Sue Moshier the jazziest, most interpretively inclined of the singers, exudes a hypnotizing, charismatic confidence that  almost disguises the boldness of some of her relentless inventiveness, most apparent on her subtle, haunting "These Foolish Things."

So many of the great songs the trio did are too seldom heard these days. I know that is a commonplace of nostalgic carping, but when that complaint comes from someone whose formative musical experience was Doo-Wop and early Rock, not Big Band Swing and Broadway, the complaint has more force, because  the music I'm prizing is more in the nature of discovery than memory. To hear Nobody's Business perform "Steam Heat," "Anything Goes," "Diamonds are A Girl's Best Friend," "Take the A-Train," "Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got that Swing," songs of this calibre backed by such superb, seemingly ego-less musicians, is to be transported to a world without auto-tune and  producers who feel it's unnecessary for a singer to learn how to sing in order to create a star. I hope Nobody's Business returns to The Iridium again. I'll make it my business to be there.