Right from the opening number, Vincent Youmans, Billy Rose and Eddie Eliscu's "Without A Song," Tierney Sutton and her band of illustrious musical partners were firing on all cylinders like a fine-tuned luxury sedan on the Autobahn. She can purr on a soft ballad (Henry Mancini's "Two for the Road"), both stop on a dime and accelerate like a cheetah (an amazing arrangement of "S'Wonderful"), and transport you in the finest of style (a carefully measured "Blue Skies" or Rodgers and Hart's "Glad To Be Unhappy"). By the time she closed the set with a beautiful "Haunted Heart" from her latest CD On the Other Side, I was giddy at being taken along on the exhilarating ride.

While her set seemed effortless, no doubt a result of working with pianist Christian Jacob, bassists Kevin Axt, and drummer Ray Brinker for over a decade, this band works very hard at their craft. The trio have worked with all the heavyweights of the industry: Michel LeGrand, Joe Pass, Jack Sheldon, Woody Herman, Les Brown, Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band, Randy Brecker, Diane Shure, Johnny Mathis, Steve Allen, Frank Gambale, Brian Setzer, David Lee Roth, Pat Benatar, Phil Woods, Natalie Cole, Jack McDuff, Jimmy Smith, Hank Jones, Toni Tennille, Lalo Schifrin, Vinx, Kitaro, Bobby Shew, Chuck Mangione, Jack Jones, Barry Manilow, Dave Koz, David Benoit, Bob Florence, Jack Sheldon, and Melissa Manchester to name a few. Jacob, Axt and Brinker are masters of their instruments and collectively score the elegant arrangements. And the arrangements are pure magic, "metric modulations" as she called it.

Each number is a fascinating symbiosis of sound, from Jacob's classically trained jazz chords, to Axt's deft finger work, to Brinker's exquisite timing and brushwork. Combine that with Sutton's superb jazz vocals and you have, well, one of the finest jazz groups I've had the pleasure of seeing. Introducing to one of the songs, Tierney said she "messed around with it", then delivered a typically unique Sutton styling. Well Tierney, keep on messing.

Steve Murray
Cabaret Scenes
September 25, 2007
www.cabaretscenes.org