Ascendant Singer Alexa Flourishes at Jazz Standard

By I Mar. 23, 2016

Thana Alexa released the album *Ode To Heroes* (Harmonia Mundi/Jazz Village) in March 2015. (Photo: Salvatore Corso)
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Though vocalist Thana Alexa is young and chic and possesses an electric stage presence, she’s also a warm-hearted chanteuse with old-school charm.

At the Jazz Standard this past week, Alexa greeted friends and strangers alike with her trademark warmth. There is no distance between artist and audience, nor between Alexa, her band and her music. It was as if she’d invited the audience into her home; her heartfelt presence infused every song in her 90-minute set.

Performing material from her 2015 album, Ode To Heroes (Harmonia Mundi/Jazz Village), Alexa’s collaborators included her husband/drummer Antonio Sanchez, pianist Kevin Hays, tenor saxophonist Ben Flocks and acoustic bassist Noam Wiesenberg.

Fresh from their seemingly never-ending world tour, the Thana Alexa Project performed with a degree of precision rare for a New York City jazz venue, where musicians can tend to focus on reading charts over pure improvisation. This cohesion gave Alexa’s band tremendous energy, which they needed for the opening song, the vocalist’s arrangement of the Dave Brubeck Quartet classic “Take Five.”’

Scatting ferociously over her group’s rapid-fire delivery, Alexa recast “Take Five” as an organic vehicle on par with Chick Corea’s “Spain.” Her purring, growling, soulful scatting and vocalese recalled a familiar Corea accomplice, Flora Purim. Sanchez’s meticulous drum figures burned at micro-dynamic volume levels like water simmering but never boiling over.

In “Take Five” as in every song of the evening, Alexa gave as much space to her soloists as to herself. Hays, who is new to the group, played beautifully throughout the set, whether performing a sparse solo with spectral chords, or matching Alexa’s vocalese with cascading interplay.

Alexa’s arrangement of Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints,” rebranded “Trace Back Your Footprints,” added lyrics to the dreamlike melody performed in 6/4. Copious solos from Flocks and Sanchez followed, with Alexa singing funky lines and Sanchez contributing drum punctuations that were anything but polite. Alexa stretched and excelled, exhibiting a ferocious animal-like presence that could give Leon Thomas a run for his money.

Alexa also made subtle use of electronics in some songs, looping her voice to create harmonies. And though her voice isn’t exceptionally powerful and her range is limited, her commanding demeanor filled the small stage.

Alexa introduced a new song, “My Love,” which she began by recalling a road story of sorts. The story made it easy to perceive the ballad as a message-in-song to Sanchez, who followed the tribute by laying down a David Garibaldi-inspired funk groove that turned into a free-for-all solo piece. The album’s title track followed, introduced by a unison husband and wife drum/vocal performance.

Another highly interactive song with a solo vocal section and tenor solo followed, then a composition dedicated to Alexa’s brother, who died in a motorcycle accident in 2010. The lyrics “Live life to the fullest/ Friends and love are things we all need so much” reflected Alexa’s positive worldview.

“Thana is a rare talent,” Hays wrote later via email. “She approaches the microphone with such intimacy and sincerity, yet she can wail and scat like nobody’s business. Her compositions are deep and personal, and a wonderful challenge with all their shifting meters (but never complex for complexity’s sake—it’s always musical).”

A groove machine with great vocal skill and interpretive sensitivity—Thana Alexa has won over the musicians. Audiences have only just begun to feel her mighty message.

(Note: To read an Editors’ Picks review of Antonio Sanchez & Migration’s 2015 album The Meridian Suite, click here.)

—Ken Micallef