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Jim Santella for All About Jazz
Published: January 07, 2008
A genuine jazz singer, Katie Bull pulls no punches when it comes to interpreting original material. She tosses in a few classic songs on The Story, So Far while portraying lyrics convincingly, scat singing with natural ease, adding a sincere blues texture to each selection, all of it coming from the bottom of her heart.
Her voice remains strong and accurate as she relates memorable stories in the pure jazz idiom. She and bassist Joe Fonda describe her aims perfectly on their duo piece "Go Ahead," with an ironic message about blind ambition and how it takes people out of focus. This session proves that carving a piece of mainstream vocal jazz works quite well for Katie Bull and company. As she interprets "There Will Never Be Another You" tenderly along with Fonda, soprano saxophonist Jeff Lederer, pianist Frank Kimbrough and drummer Matt Wilson, the singer reveals incredible chops to go along with her true spirit. Except for a change to alto sax and multi-tracked vocal harmony on "Twisted," the same unit surges forward with courage to give this classic Annie Ross-Wardell Gray tune a facelift.
A New York native, Bull took to the arts as a multi-faceted discipline early on, her father teaching modern dance at NYU. A graduate of SUNY Purchase, she's been thoroughly immersed in music, dance, writing and directing. The influence that singing teachers Jay Clayton and Sheila Jordan have left upon her soul remain quite apparent. As pianist Michael Jefry Stevens, Fonda, drummer Harvey Sorgen and baritone saxophonist David CasT assist Bull with a dramatic original on "Half Full," you can feel the fierce forces of her creative spirit turning corners. Later, she and guitarist David Phelps deliver "Paleontology," another original with a tale about life's cares that is siphoned through the blues.
Underlying Bull's focus on jazz as a partner in multiple disciplines, the accompanying twenty-minute DVD features dreamlike sequences with medieval costumes as a cast of players work with the singer on city sidewalks to extend her musical session. The DVD includes vocal versions of "Lover" and "Some Enchanted Evening," which conclusively complement this recommended audio CD.
Reprinted with permission. Copyright © 2008 All About Jazz and Jim Santella.
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Christopher Loudon for Jazz Times
Published: April, 2008
What happens when performance art slams into vocal jazz? Two words: Katie Bull. Though it is easy to detect myriad influences in Bull, extending from the cool minimalism of Helen Merrill and Chet Baker to the boplicious ingenuity of Jon Hendricks and the bold vibrancy of Sheila Jordan (one of Bull's earliest mentors), attempting to categorize the native New Yorker, and leader of the city's inter-arts movement, is rather like trying to get a few dozen wriggling snakes to lay orderly and still. If you want pretty ballads prettily sung, look elsewhere. But if you're in the mood for envelope-pushing experimentation on a grand scale, dive into the 17 tracks that comprise this dazzling voyage into a beyond so beyond that even as intrepid a pioneer as Bobby McFerrin is left miles behind.
Opening with "Which?," a thunderously asymmetrical dissection of a partner's cunning changeability, she segues into the butter-soft, Sondheim-worthy lullaby "A Song for Hudson's Heart," then proceeds to insert sharp thorns among the velvety rose petals of "For All We Know" before multi-tracking herself into a wonderful, Dali-esque frenzy on "Twisted." Her "Half Full" seems a lover's pursuit interpreted as a looming barroom brawl, her "Next Generation Doodlin'" is a peanut butter-lined head trip and her "Go Ahead" suggests a bemused cynic's spin on the old Mamas & the Papas anthem "Go Where You Wanna Go." There's more, including a kaleidoscopic, four-part "Dream Cycle" and an accompanying DVD of a quasi-medieval, costumed romp-cum-clownfest (billed as a "walking dance" through the streets of New York) shaped around Rodgers and Hart's "Lover" and Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Some Enchanted Evening," but I think you get the brilliantly cacophonous picture.
Reprinted with permission. Copyright © 2008 Jazz Times and Christopher Loudon.
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Skoot Larson for Skoot's Jazz
Taking the Bull With the Horns
An incredible entertainer who is difficult to pigeonhole, Katie Bull is proving to be a unique vocal talent, jazz musician, composer and lyricist, actress, director, dancer, voice coach, teacher…and the list goes on. If you have any doubts, just listen to Bull's latest CD/DVD collection, "The Story, So Far." It will make you both a believer and a devotee of this captivating performer.
Bull's creative approach to music has been in evidence right from her first recording, "Conversations with the Jokers," in 2002. The lady's 2004 disc, "Love Spook," hints at an extraordinary multi-media event to come, with half the selections, both words and music, coming from Bull's imaginative pen. "The Story, So Far," we can safely assume, is just what it says, the further progression of this gianormous talent, maturing toward super-world-beater status.
The DVD portion of this package not only displays the many sides of Katie Bull; actress, dancer, and vocalist, but also introduces the fine musicians from the session and the actors/dancers of the Bull Family Orchestra theater group.
The compact disc mixes some fantasy, some folly, and some beat generation ideology in a vat of ripping, swinging jazz. Bull's lyrics are though provoking and somewhat cerebral as they describe true-life events and feelings mixed with a dash of down-anddirty politics and fun. "Next Generation Doodlin'," is a grand example. The original "Doodlin'" was written by pianist Horace Silver over fifty years ago. Words were added a decade later by Jon Hendricks, telling of a hipster thought to be crazy because of the stream-of-consciousness scribbling he left everywhere. Katy Bull's "Next Generation Doodlin'," shows that this hip insanity has evolved into the new millennium, where the doodles bounce around in the mind, no pad or pencil required.
The recording's opener, "Which?" is a grabber, what one might think of as Mingus Mysticism. Bull cries out a frantic call-and-response duo with saxophonist Jeff Lederer over the thoughtful piano of Frank Kimbrough leading from lyrical poem to beautiful scatting. Solos are solid, straight-ahead improvisation, punctuated by background shouts and cries from the Bull Family Orchestra players. The words deal with the mood swings one might find in any relationship, and fit hand-and-glove with the schizophrenic feel of the music. A clap of distant thunder punctuates the final notes of this questioning "Which?"
In Bull's shaping hands, the Lewis and Koots standard "For All We Know" turns into a somewhat cynical conversation, half spoken, half sung, and book-ending a bountiful batch of scat vocal over the cleverly disjointed comping of Kimbrough. The piano man's solo on this classic uses clever syncopation, his chords lagging slightly behind the beat. Bull adds a touch all her own to Wardell Grey and Annie Ross's "Twisted." Ross's offbeat lyric has been performed by many in a variety of genres, but never with such an interesting ‘twist' as on this recording! "Twisted" was written as a tribute to the 1950's hipsters' fascination with insanity. It's story relays a first-person account of hiply bizarre actions intended to impress ones psychiatrist. Katie Bull brings the crazy tale to life, accompanying her vocal bridge with an overdubbing of her split-personality voice, a fourth step above. With Lederer's wild tenor added to the mix, Belleview and Camarillo quickly springs to the mind of this twisted listener.
It isn't an exaggeration to call Katie Bull a genius. Listen to the clever and often timeless words she writes, and the striking musical lines the lady puts behind these poetic offerings. Her song "Jack" sounds like the pseudo-intellectualism of the 50s, painting a cool and quiet cat assumed to know more than he's saying. "Go Ahead," a duet with bassist Joe Fonda, tells of the self-centered, "all-about-me," individual we see on the road every day, going forward with no regard for other drivers.
The packaging is as alluring as the discs themselves. The tri-fold sleeve is charactered with assorted angels, devils, clowns, and other medieval-fantasy folk. The outside colors on this work-of-art are dark and foreboding, opening onto a bright and colorful resolution mixing fancifully penciled denizens with photographs of the merry revelers making up Bull's players. The musicians themselves are pen-and-inked on one fold as a troop of satyrs and man-beast combinations, each bearing the face of one of her accompanists. The cats in the band are all players of near mythical proportions. Bull's group features long time friends and fellows: Pianist Frank Kimbrough, Joe Fonda on contrabass, the drumming of Matt Wilson and simpatico saxophonist Jeff Lederer, augmented at times by Michael Jefry Stevens at the keyboard, the guitar of David Phelps, drummer Harvey Sorgen and the saxophones styling of David Cast.
This full musical show falls into perspective when you consider that Katie's father, Richard Bull, was a well-known dancer and jazz pianist. Katie grew up around the theater, absorbing the workings and fine points of music, acting and Terpsichore right from the source. As her powerful verve moves forward, we can only guess how far out the story's next chapter will be.
Copyright © 2008 Skoot's Jazz and Skoot Larson.
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