THE NYC JAZZ RECORD INCLUDED “LIVE FROM LOCKDOWN” AMONG IT’S BEST VOCAL RELEASES OF 2021!

“Let this be the music we remember from the COVID-19 era, then, instead of something tatty, haphazard, or unnecessarily negative: a father and daughter facing an uncertain future and opting to have a musical conversation. Thank goodness we get to be a fly on the wall.” - Morgan Enos, JazzTimes

THE LINER NOTES by Charles Taylor:

The solitude imposed on us by the pandemic might seem a reflection of the solitude that jazz singing has always fetishized. Who hasn’t, at some low moment, imagined themselves to be a lone Sinatra standing under a 3AM streetlight, or a ravaged Billie Holiday looking after the departing back of another unsuitable lover?

As both singer and pianist, Champian Fulton has always tended towards the sunny, which is not to say the falsely cheery, but rather the radiant, the affirmative. I once told her her version of “When Your Lover Has Gone” was the most upbeat I’d ever heard and she shot back, “Maybe she’s glad he’s gone.” The accompanying smile was so dazzling you could miss the slyness.

Optimism is too often mistaken for lack of depth, which may be why the performer who manages to be both optimist and artist is a rare bird. But I can’t imagine that anyone who has heard the Champian Fulton’s fully felt, sometimes sinuous optimism, whether in record or in person, is particularly surprised that, faced with a global challenge, she’d stage what amounts to her own personal USO. Live from Lockdown, her Sunday-evening webcast, has become a respite for the weary troops, which, right now, means all of us. This resulting album, a representative selection of those now-yearlong sessions, is far too cohesive a work to be thought of as a mere souvenir. For future listeners just hearing the music without knowing the context, it will be pleasure undiluted. For those of us who know the context, I think it will be one of those pleasures that deserves to be called sustaining, a gift that helped us in a rough time and, more important, told us it was worth getting through.

What you hear on these twelve tracks is a very sophisticated type of play. Working with her steadiest collaborator, her dad Stephen, on fluegelhorn and trumpet, Live from Lockdown proceeds not as cutting contest but as a demonstration of the particular joy of two musical partners being reminded, on tune after tune, just how in synch, they are. (I can’t imagine her fans not hearing this latest iteration of their partnership and wondering, what took you two so long to devote an entire record to it.)

The synchronicity starts right away as the album opens with Champian scatting an intro to “I Hadn’t Anyone Till You,” and Stephen entering soon after, blowing short, percussive notes, doodling under the vocal, an uninsistent but nonetheless present partner. The sound of his horn here might be perfect for that kind of after-hours wallowing we slide into when heartbreak comes along, if it weren’t so resilient. Elsewhere, on “Pass the Hat,” Stephen unleashes what you might call swagger that soars, raffishly lowdown and so ebullient it heads for the sky.

His wit finds its perfect partner in Champian’s piano playing and, I think in even new ways for her, in her singing. The clarity of her vocals has become sweet in a way that’s unique to her. She can, as on the opening track and the sublime “What Will I Tell My Heart?”, go from a high whispery register, consistently present throughout the album,” to sudden low swoops that bounce us back down to earth. Listen, in that track, to the slight sibilance that has crept into her vocals, the little slur on the “es” sounds in “reason” or “friends” or “start,” a sound that comes with a sliver of regret, as if she were trying to hold onto the moment a beat longer, before it wafts into the ether.

We’re not used to artists who declare their optimism as a statement of purpose. It takes some getting used to, especially in hard times. Who’d expect a version of “Moonglow” that doesn’t sound like you’re hearing it from a spring night’s balcony, or drifting from the open doors of a dance you’ve wandered away from? But it’s that sort of reimagining that makes Live from Lockdown more than a diversion. How fitting Champian and Stephen cover “I Had the Craziest Dream.” This dream of the pleasures still open to us, even now, seems a work of eminent sanity.