![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/Dee-Dee-With-Kenny.jpg\" "\\"Dee")
<\/a>recording with Benny Goodman, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153My Mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Son In Law,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Strange Fruit\u00e2\u20ac\u009d whose message she delivered with anguish so profound that it that sent a chill through the crowd. Pointedly, the house announcer introduced the evening as a performance by the Dee Dee Bridgewater Quintet. The group label is apt. She is the lead instrument in the band, which has all the interaction of a finely attuned bop group, with the sidemen enlisted in just enough schtick to help warrant calling the event a show. Bridgewater is pictured here with bassist Kenny Davis, whom she featured on several pieces, as she did tenor saxophonist Jimmy Greene, drummer Kenny Phelps and her long time musical director, pianist Edsel Gomez. They all soloed extensively and well<\/p>\nFor all her acting, which is natural and unforced, the primary impression Bridgewater creates is of a jazz vocalist with unerring time and intonation who gets to the heart of a song. Following a standing ovation, she returned to the stage to sing a non-Holiday song, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Amazing Grace,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d alone. On the final chorus, she invited the audience to sing along, but she gave it so much power and feeling that few had the temerity to join in. <\/p>\n
A sizeable number of concertgoers circled down the winding stairway of the Portland Center for the Performing Arts to the Art Bar. The space has a bar, a restaurant and a three-story ceiling crowned with a sculptured dome that is itself a work of art. There, two hometown favorites who are also international successes appeared in one of their collaborations. For their She knew plenty of other songs, many of them from albums the pair have made together. Someone—I think it was I—commented that people who attended the upstairs and the downstairs events had the pleasure of hearing in one evening two jazz vocalists who sing all but unfailingly in tune. At one point there was a missed harmonic signal. Kilgore veered slightly, but her sonar immediately locked her back onto the path. The repertoire included a few songs from Why Fight The Feeling<\/a>, their album of Frank Loesser songs, among them \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Lady\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in Love With You\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Can\u00e2\u20ac\u009dt Get Out of This Mood,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the latter sung with languor that Kilgore seems to employ more frequently these days in her ballads. However, she has lost none of the sunny feeling she brings to up-tempo pieces. A spontaneous medley of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Only a Paper Moon\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was saturated with it.<\/p>\n<\/a> duo gigs, it is Dave Frishberg\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s policy to serve only as pianist with Rebecca Kilgore, not as a singer of his own famous songs. During the course of their two long, satisfying sets, someone on the margins of the room called for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Peel Me a Grape.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know it,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Kilgore said. Frishberg gazed at the ceiling. <\/p>\n