Does it spark joy? Yes, definitely...and maybe we music critics should ask the Marie Kondo question more often. London-based vocalist/lyricist Georgia Mancio and New Zealand-born, US-based pianist, arranger and composer Alan Broadbent have been prospering as a songwriting and performing partnership for more than a decade and have so far produced three strong albums. Wednesday night’s concert at Pizza Express Jazz Club in Soho was part of the launch tour for the third album, A Story Left Untold.
In fact, the undimmed spark and the palpable joy of this singing, this playing and these songs have led one US commentator to suggest that this partnership and theur latest album in particular deserve to be rewarded with a Grammy nomination. If that were to happen, it would – here’s hoping – be Broadbent’s fifteenth.
I remember a wonderful music writer, the late Brian Blain, attending the launch of Mancio and Broadbent’s first album together – fittingly at Ronnie Scott’s where Mancio had once worked as a waitress – and commenting that Alan Broadbent has “the kind of understated class that derives from complete mastery of virtually every kind of jazz in existence.” There is indeed variety in these compositions, but what is omnipresent in them is deep craft, logic and balance behind the melodic and harmonic construction and the phrasing. Broadbent’s music has an astonishingly natural flow. That was true of the stellar work he did with Charlie Haden’s Quartet West, and it absolutely shines through in these new songs.
Broadbent has explained that what Mancio has brought to his compositions, written in the tradition of the great American songwriters, is the kind of lyrics he had perhaps unconsciously been looking for to go with them: “Her words sound like my notes; they are meant to be sung.” That kind of affinity and complementarity is indeed something precious.
These songs are about deeply personal subjects, about strongly held dreams, and the serene focus, authenticity and clarity and which Georgia Mancio herself brings to them are unforgettable. She has astonishing strength and resilience, driving every aspect the whole recording and touring venture, as well as defining and shaping the art form. Everything about her songs is so meticulously expressed and crafted, and the concert, with its carefully considered path from the personal to the universal - and the political - was beautifully thought through. The two halves of the programme had an appealing and convincing shape. Concerts are meant to be special occasions; this certainly was one.
The personal is also universal, and these songs with Broadbent’s music and Mancio’s lyrics are starting to find there way into other singers’ repertoires: Janis Siegel, Tierney Sutton, Judy Wexler so far…The songs are so good, it is no accident, and there will surely be more.
In the live context, there is a wonderful ease about the way Broadbent accompanies Mancio (pictured above, photo by Monika S. Jakubowska). The fact that he has virtuoso "chops" is undeniable, but he never takes the limelight away from the singer, and the handing-back of the melodic line happens every time with grace and generosity. Bassist Andrew Cleyndert and drummer Dave Ohm are superbly, unfailingly attuned to every subtlety and contrast in this music.
My own answer to the Marie Kondo question - a moment which sparked particular joy - was the series of life-affirming rising intervals in the song “All My Life” dedicated to Mancio’s sister, the art historian and lecturer Marie-Anne Mancio. The rising fifth almost imperceptibly shifts to take on the shining candour of a rising major sixth, and the song ends with the triumph and the glory of rising octave. Wonderful.
- A Story Left Untold is released on 5 May on Roomspin Records
- More new music reviews on theartsdesk
