“Mancio belongs to that comparatively rare breed of singer, the interpreter of the lyric … Her new album is a wonderful example of the jazz interpreter’s art”
Vocalist Georgia Mancio and pianist Alan Broadbent have been collaborating for 12 years, on three albums: Songbook in 2017, Quiet Is The Star in 2021 and now this collection of originals co-written by the duo. Bassist Andrew Cleyndert is co-producer with Mancio, and with drummer Dave Ohm is present on most tracks. The 10 songs were written from 2016-24, and recorded 2023-24.
The Love I Left Behind is a ballad in ad lib tempo, inspired by Scottish poet John Glenday’s “For My Wife, Reading in Bed”. It’s a piano/vocal duet sung in English and Italian – Mancio’s second language. A Story Left Untold closes the album. But the highlight for me is the wonderful ballad In The Afternoon. The composition has what Alec Wilder would recognise as a wonderful harmonic step from minor to major. The delightful From Me To You is a mid/uptempo number in loose Latin rhythm. When The Time Has Come To Part is a gorgeous, memorable mid-tempo composition; Same Old Moon is a plangent uptempo number. The album ends with an unexpected and beautiful orchestral version of the title track.
Mancio belongs to that comparatively rare breed of singer, the interpreter of the lyric. The interpreter is like an actor in a play, or a poetry reading – they give a dramatic performance. “Interpreting the words” means “interpreting them like an actor” – a film or radio actor, not a stage actor. A minimal requirement for an interpreter is that the lyrics are intelligible. But “interpreting the lyrics” is not the same as “singing them intelligibly”. Stage actors enunciate because they must be heard; likewise jazz interpreters, since they want the meaning to be clear. But meaningful interpretation is not just clarity of diction.
Billie Holiday began the tradition of jazz interpretation, which she achieved through mastery of the new microphone technology. Jazz singing has two further essential features in addition to interpreting a lyric. Jazz singers improvise a line, and create beautiful tone or distinctive sound. With Mancio, as with Holiday, the improvisation serves the interpretation rather than distracting from it. She aims at tonal beauty, and has many ways of achieving it. But her virtuosity is not ostentatious like that of Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan, neither of whom is an interpreter of the lyric. Her new album is a wonderful example of the jazz interpreter’s art.