Béat Kaestli
Birdland, NYC, August 18, 2016
Reviewed by Rob Lester for Cabaret Scenes
Tradition semi-dictates that singers start sets with lively, rhythmic numbers—ice-breakers making audiences’ moods as upbeat as the music. Save emotional, slow ballads for later, right?
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Not jazz singer Béat Kaestli. He commands attention with sparseness, rather than spunk and sparkle. Beginning a cappella, intense, snail-paced, motionless, torchy, tortured, tragic balladry is his opening— musically opening a vein. “My heart is sad and lonely,” he cries in 1930’s classic case of love addiction, “Body and Soul.” It ends his tour concert CD, Live in Europe; he’s at Birdland celebrating it, going live to celebrate going live after five studio albums (all represented on Live, plus new items). Shrugging off the opener’s angst and laser-beamed lamenting, Kaestli reveals himself as gregarious, down-to-earth, humble, even shy. While he swings breezily, adapts pop-rock comfortably for mash-ups, etc.
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, his heart—worn unabashedly on his sleeve—seems to be in über-sensitive, romantic material.
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Thus, ever so softly, “Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise” purrs, words and music glowing like simmering embers, tender and modernized warmth many degrees removed from its formal 1928 operetta origins.
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From a French-focused album, the singer (who hails from Switzerland) makes the choice of a song about choices made in life: “Choix de vie.” Everything works and keeps the attention of the crowd, which includes other jazz vocalists and aficionados. Pianist Walter Fischbacher, who led the music on the tour, does the same honors for NYC gigs; instrumental breaks are generous and rewarding. While the vocalist closes his eyes sometimes while singing, a no-no for some reviewers and patrons, it’s not irksome in this case. Rather than shutting us out by shutting his eyes, his concentration invites us to join his inner world. And the outer world, the glamorous land of Birdland, is one with great sound and ambience this night.
