Kendra Shank © Andrea Canter

Kendra Shank’s flair for vocal drama comes naturally as the daughter of a playwright and actress. Growing up in southern California, she first acted at age five, was playing guitar by thirteen, and working as a folk singer in Seattle after high school. She first fell under the spell of jazz listening to a professor’s recordings of Billie Holiday; the attraction was furthered as she spent time in Paris, listening and sitting in at jazz clubs. Back in Seattle she began studies with Jay Clayton, and later landed a gig with the great Bob Dorough as vocalist/guitarist/percussionist for his West Coast tour. It was Shirley Horn who took notice and co-produced Shank's critically-acclaimed debut, Afterglow (Mapleshade, 1994), and invited the young singer to sit in at the Village Vanguard in New York. Relocating to New York in 1997, Kendra released two recordings for Jazz Focus—Wish (1998) and Reflections (2000), the latter with her long-standing ensemble of pianist Frank Kimbrough, bassist Dean Johnson, and drummer Tony Moreno. Together, the ensemble creates "...a practically telepathic integration...these four people appear to have emerged from the same womb" (Lawrence Brazier, Jazz Now). In recent years, Shank has headlined at major jazz venues across the U.S. and internationally, and has been featured on NPR's JazzSet and Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz.

Until Kendra’s A Spirit Free, the music of Abbey Lincoln had not been the subject of a full recording. Shank was inspired to pursue this project after hearing Abbey’s series of concerts at Lincoln Center in 2002, although she had been a fan of Lincoln for nearly a decade. In tackling the Lincoln canon, Kendra encountered uniquely complex compositions where the music trumps all convention, creating unusual encounters with time and form. To her credit (and sanity), Kendra makes no effort to sound like Lincoln—and who could? The compositions, the lyrics belong to Abbey Lincoln, but these 11 songs are reinvented, reinterpreted, as personal extensions of Kendra Shank and her fellow musicians. It is perhaps the greatest tribute to Abbey Lincoln that Kendra Shank took the music and went her own way, a path clearly inspired by the personal expression of emotion but individually distinctive. And the recording of A Spirit Free followed a different path as well. Notes Kendra, “With lots of records, the musicians play it the first time in the studio and then they go out on tour, and it really develops after the recording. We did it the other way around—we played [the music] for a few years and then recorded it! Abbey’s been such an inspiration, always growing, always learning, always expanding--never becoming stagnant. Always being awake, present.”

On tour this past summer to promote A Spirit Free, Kendra Shank’s live performances interspersed the Abbey Lincoln songbook with an eclectic list of other compositions, usually with her quartet; the recording includes guest appearances from tenor/soprano saxophonist Billy Drewes, guitarist Ben Monder and accordionist Gary Versace. On record, the additional instruments add layers of color to the core of the music, while in live performance, it is Kendra herself who creates the colors of horn and at times additional percussion. In both settings, Shank makes extensive use of a unique approach to vocalese that seems much like African chanting, the sounds mimicking words as of a language, with its own syntax and vocabulary. In fact, Kendra’s liner note indicates that she in fact has devised a “personal language that I improvise to express what can’t be expressed with words.” Shank further adds to her interpretative power through her varying of dynamics and sliding tones as much as her personal approach to phrasing and rhythm. At times Kendra evokes a warmer, less spartan Patricia Barber, her phrases shaped more by what is added than what is left out. However, her approach is impossible to classify, and she can remind you of Tierney Sutton on one tune, Ann Murray on another, always clear and elegant regardless of the material. Not obvious on recording but clear in live performance, Kendra uses her microphone for more than amplification—waving it in front of her mouth, she creates a subtle, eerie vibrato, almost as a faint wind pass through a tunnel.

Shank’s collaborators on record and on tour came together about eight years ago (1999), “and it evolved into its own sound,” she explains. “We respond to each other and interact with each other to create this sound… The personality of each player has contributed to who I am now. Within the group, it’s mutual, the sound as a whole is a product of each of us…What makes it so fun and exciting is the constant interaction, like a dance, like a conversation.”

Frank Kimbrough © Andrea Canter

John Stowell©Mark LaMoreaux

 In addition to a few selections from A Spirit Free, the set list  at the 55 Bar likely will include creative arrangements of standards and originals from previous releases, and new songs by composers such as Kirk Nurock, Fred Hersch and Frank Kimbrough.  Those lucky enough to squeeze into the small 55 Bar can expect to be mesmerized by the voice, the chants, the vocalese, the telepathic interplay among the musicians. Whether listening to Kendra Shank on record or on the live stage,  in small trio or full quintet, it’s clear that we are hearing a singular voice who will leave her personal mark on the music.

[Click here for a Jazz Police review of A Spirit Free]

The Kendra Sahnk Trio performs the early show at the 55 Bar (55 Christopher Street) in Greenwich Village on October 26th, 6-9 pm; www.55bar.com. Full itinerary and additional information about Kendra Shank available at www.kendrashank.com