Huntington Beach
- It may have been stormy outside, but it was all blue skies and rainbows
Sunday inside El Matador, where singer Sunny WIlkinson brightened up a
cloudy day with her playful, sometimes mischievous vocal style.
In a program that
roamed through ballads, be-bop and bossa nova, Wilkinson proved to be
an inventive stylist who likes to toy with a tune's rhythm and temperament.
And she has the vocal goods to keep things from sounding as if she's
just playing around.
Though her voice
showed respectable range, pitch and character, Wilkinson's rhythmic
treatments were most impressive. On-the-beat scat lines that began in
her voice's middle range developed into offbeat statements that hopscotched
across the scale. She was especially adept at dancing over the changes,
sometimes drawing one chord into another from a single, seamless line.
During "If I Were a Bell," she hit all the lyric's rhythmic high-points
with "dings," "dongs," and assorted scat.
The singer's instrumental
foil in these proceedings was Frank Potenza, a guitarist who, though
best known for his electric work, played acoustic in accompaniment here.
He also infrequently added synthesizer tones through his instrument,
thanks to a set of foot pedals that switched him into his electronics.
Potenza's flowing mix of chords and single-note accents served as a
sounding board for the singer's rhythmic play, and some of the evenings's
best moments came when the two worked as a duo.
The pair teamed
on their own fast-paced arrangement of "I've Got Rhythm" and began to
work in tunes with the same, familiar chord changes. First to surface
was Sonny Rollins' "Oleo," followed by Thelonious Monk's "Rhythm-A-Ning,"
which Potenza decorated with a line from "Blue Gardenia."
With bassist Luther
Hughes and drummer David Derge joining the duo, Wilkinson worked selections
from Antonio Carlos Jobim, Horace Silver and Dori Caymmi. Her scat was
especially percussive during Caymmi's "Obsession," her voice particularly
warm on "You've Changed" and Bob Hilliard and Sammy Fain's "Alice in
Wonderland." She showed strength, breadth and an ability to leapfrog
around the scale during Silver's "Opus de Funk." During Milton Nascimento's
ballad "Bridges," she showed heart and soul as well.
...the night clearly
belonged to Wilkinson.
