Lizz Wright: Straying Across Genres and Mixing in Confessions

Saturday April 10, 2010

By Stuart Munro from the Boston Globe

“So much light in here,’’ Lizz Wright remarked a short way into her set. “Makes me feel like confessing.’’ Then, a murmured offhand observation: “I guess that’s what I’m doing up here anyway.’’

Thursday evening at the Wilbur Theatre, her confessing spanned 75 minutes, drawing primarily on her most recent album, “The Orchard,’’ for content. Wright typically comes advertised as jazz, but, like contemporaries such as Norah Jones and Madeleine Peyroux, she has become much more of an interstitial artist. On Thursday she found the grooves between and across musical forms and styles; R&B, gospel, various strains of soul and a little funk, Americana, and, most of all, the blues, all surfaced in the songs she sang.

She kicked things off with her soulful rendition of Neil Young’s “Old Man,’’ introduced with a marvelous, elongated acoustic guitar solo from Robin Macatangay, before ramping up on the keys of Kenny Banks’s Hammond organ. Then she headed right for the blues with her smoldering reinvention of the Ike & Tina Turner chestnut “I Idolize You.’’ “Speak Your Heart’’ leaned in a neo-soul direction, “My Heart’’ brought an urgent plea set to a propulsively shuffling beat, and the twin beauties “Hit the Ground’’ and “Song for Mia’’ were suffused with dusky Americana.

Confessing turned into testifying with a funky run-through of the gospel standard “Walk With Me, Lord’’ (which blew away the version she recorded on her debut) and, later, a going-to-church medley pushed by the pounding piano of Banks that coursed through “I’ve got a Feeling’’ and “Up Above My Head.’’

Throughout, Wright was the picture of relaxed elegance (what she was playing for us, she said at one point, was “living room music’’), and she seemed utterly at home on her stage, performing barefoot in a flowing, floor-length gown, arms rising and falling, beckoning and yearning, as if what her powerful, river-deep and mountain-high voice was singing was flowing out through them. All in all, it was quite a confession, by turns transfixing and hip-shake inducing.

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Song For Mia	4:53	Lizz Wright
When I Fall	3:55	Lizz Wright
My Heart	4:00	Lizz Wright

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