Jazz Festival Highlights - Best of the Fest
Toronto-based singer, Tena Palmer, first known for her work in the ground-breaking quartet, Chelsea Bridge a decade ago, is a fearless vocalist who seems to put her life on the line on every tune. That raw intensity was on display through two brilliant sets on the Alcan stage. Palmer led a trio with John Geggie and Dan Artuso on guitar and pedal steel as they performed alt-country and jazz-flavoured bluegrass from her CD North Atlantic Drift.
The spare instrumentation showed-off her powerhouse voice and improvisational skills. And the choice of material was just right: David Frishberg’s Sweet Kentucky Ham (a quirky song about life on the road), Tom Waits’s bittersweet The Briar and the Rose, and several of her own tunes about love, loss and restlessness.
Since winning the festival’s Grand Prix award with Chelsea Bridge in 1993, Palmer has clearly gained a lot of experience after several years performing in Iceland and Holland . She’s got the voice, but she’s also got the storyteller’s gift. - Peter Hadekel, July 7, 2006
Peter Hadekel - The Montreal Gazette (Jul 7, 2006)
" Palmer soars where angels fear to sing".
Mark Miller - The Toronto Globe and Mail (Jan 10, 1996)
CD North Atlantic Drift
"It is a beautiful combo of warmth and being on the edge, like Wayne Shorter or
Miles. It's an elusive place Tena seems to have found because she is a
brave and fearless woman!"
Mike Murley - Multi Juno Award winner, Jazz Report Magazine's Saxophonist of the year 2002 - 2004.
Mike Murley - i - net review of 'North Atlantic Drift' (Jan 12, 2009)
Roving Tena has a lot to say.
North Atlantic Drift
Tena Palmer with John Geggie
and Dan Artuso (Independent)
4 stars ****
By Doug Fischer
Everything we know about Tena Palmer tells us she’s a restless spirit.
Best known in Ottawa as the daringly evocative singer for Chelsea Bridge, the early – ‘90s Celtic-jazz quartet, Palmer has traveled well beyond the usual boundaries since then, musically and geographically.
For six years, she hung out in Reykjavik, Iceland, a creative breeding ground where she threw herself into projects that included adventures in alt-bluegrass, bossa nova, choral music, electronics and poetry.
She also recorded her debut solo CD, Crucible, part of a five-disc series of experimental music that made something of a splash in Europe.
Along the way came tours of Scandinavia, a home in the Netherlands, frequent trips to North America for concerts and recording, all of it culminating ( and hey, why not?) in a 2003 move to Ottawa and a teaching gig at Carleton.
“I’ve always had this need to keep moving”, she said around the time she settled in Ottawa.
“That applies to my life and my music. Who knows how long I’ll be here?”
Two years later, palmer is still in town. And if North Atlantic Drift is any measure, the layover has provided just the reflective balm to soothe that unruly spirit.
The recording is a deeply personal travelogue about life on the road, about the hours spent with and without lovers, about longing and loneliness, about the tutg between the need to put down roots and the pull of the highway.
“I play on the road/with no one to pick-up the phone/when it’s late and I call my home”, she sings on Dexterous Western Men, a bitter-sweet tale of love-gone-off-the-rails that sets the stage for what’s to come.
And what follows is a mix of originals and unexpected covers – old nuggets like My Buddy, modern heart-tuggers like Tom Waits’ The Briar and the Rose and oddball showtunes like Small World – each in its own way playing to Palmer’s theme of restlessness.
Joined by Chelsea bridge alumnus, John Geggie on bass – it’s their first time on record together in a decade – and Dan Artuso on guitar and pedal steel, Palmer’s voice is set against a sensually spare soundscape that places acoustic folk and bluegrass next to voice-bass jazz duets and shimmering bossa nova.
The record’s high point comes on North Atlantic Drifter, a dreamy, luxurious memoir about “getting lost chasin’ dreams ‘round the bend” in Iceland or anyplace else people run to find refuge from love. Or, perhaps, to find love.
“I’d always dreamed of a cowboy/who’d lope into town all lanky and lonesome/and I know lonesome/lonesome I know,” Palmer sings with raw quietness courted by Artuso’s lonesome pedal steel.
It’s a piercing moment on a disc that sticks in your brain and comes back tot haunt you when you least expect it.
Alanis Morissette, Lynn Miles, Kathleen Edwards. It’s time to add Tena Palmer’s name to the list of Ottawa songwriters with something to say.
***** A classic of the genre
**** Excellent
Doug Fischer - Ottawa Citizen
Palmer is a natural singer, songwriter
Can stand beside jazz, country greats
Tena Palmer is a no-frills singer. Unpretentious, low-key, audience friendly, a natural performer — she saves her fire for her music. Technically she’s a virtuoso. Expressively she’s a rare one, right up there with the jazz great ones — Ella, Billie, Sarah — in her ability to take us into the heart of the song: she gives us the gift of discovering depths and nuances of feeling in ourselves we never suspected we had.
But she also sings country and bluegrass, and requires no handicap to stand alongside Patsy Cline. The two singers are similar both in style and in the conviction that the music is as much about the quiet, universal passion that gives birth to it as it is about heartbreak and loneliness.
As a songwriter, Palmer’s gift for metaphor takes a simple song about the loneliness of a touring musician and shifts it into warp drive, not so much propelling the song into a wider universe of human isolation, and the alienation it generates, as instantaneously bringing that wider universe home into the here and now of the concert hall.
Songwriting comes as naturally to Palmer, apparently, as her vocal agility in navigating both a wide range of notes (some high enough to qualify as squeaks) and her rainbow palette of timbres. She sang a song about looking for a missing hairclip after listening to West Virginia mining songs. But the song is really about women musicians late for a gig. It’s a country blues and Palmer wailed it out, pulling notes around the top of the chord changes like taffy.
Most of her songs were originals, but she also sang choice compositions by Gordon Lightfoot, Merle Travis, Mason Daring and Jimmy Driftwood. The lady has taste as well as talent.
Of her own songs, Christmas in Antarctica was typical of her originality and her intellectual curiosity about the strangeness of our planet: Christmas near the South Pole occurs in high summer with 24 hours of perpetual daylight.
Stephen Pedersen - Halifax Chronicle Herald
PRESS QUOTES:
“One of the most exciting jazz vocalists this country has produced in some time” Peter Hadekel, Montreal Gazette
“Sensual and Intense” – Ann Kristin Frøystad, - Romsdals Budstikke, Norway.
“(With) musicianship and good taste …her control is absolutely solid, her texture sharply rounded.”- Mike Zwerin, International Herald Tribune.
“…a Montrealer, who is…a vocalist and writer to watch. As well as her ability to scat with the abandon of a young Ella Fitzgerald, Palmer writes intelligent, contemporary lyrics.”- James Hale, Ottawa Citizen.
“(Elle) a une voix qui a tout me plaire: acrobatique, élastique même, elle sait prendre des risques entournée d’une musique qui demeure toutefois accessible, et elle peut tout aussi bien se faire sensuelle et rafraîchissante quand elle se met à la balade.” - Annie Landreville, L’ Ecouteur.
“Tena Palmer’s presence in the jazz singing world will bring a lot to its continued evolution.”- Grammy-nominated jazz vocalist, Janet Lawson.
“…she takes your ear immediately. Not the classic jazz singing voice, but she’s got a flexibility, a lightness, incisiveness, a sense of play with the other musicians that is really unique. A beautiful voice that grows on you
the more you hear it.” - Katie Malloch, CBC Jazzbeat.
“..la voix ensorceleuse de Tena Palmer. (Elle) utilisant toutes les possibilités de ses cordes vocales, suivant en cela l’exemple de nombreuses vocalistes actuelles, mais saichant aussi ‘comme Ella’. - Bernard Legros, Chroniques Disques, Belgium.
“a bold manner of singing, sets herself apart from the crowd with an interesting collection of syllables and sounds and a fearlessly imaginative way around a melody line.” - Mark Miller, Toronto Globe and Mail.
“…l’élément clé du group, nous a séduit rapidement par sa présentation vocale sur scène, tantôt chantant comme dans la tradition classique de jazz,- tantôt jouant et improvisant avec sa voix – comme le
ferait un instrument.” - Claire Bourbonnais, Le Devoir.
“…a hip scat style”, “…a chameleon with competence well beyond conventional jazz practice.” - Krin Gabbard, Cadence magazine.
“A gifted and exciting vocalist, Palmer manages to discover breathtaking new life in that most clichéd of jazz styles, vocalese.” - Andrew Jones, Montréal Mirror.
“An extraordinary vocalist!” - Annie Landreville, Coda magazine.
“…the Montréal singer whose uninhibited style has a little each of Sheila Jordan, Jeanne Lee and a happy three year old.” - Mark Miller, Toronto Globe and Mail.
“Palmer’s timing is impeccable; her clear voice is bright and bouncy and plays well off the other instruments.”
- Network magazine.
“…not drowning, waving…” is a lush and fascinating album characterized by Palmer’s lighter-than-air vocals…the sound recalls the experimental pop of Jane Siberry or Joni Mitchell.” - Lynn Saxberg, Ottawa Citizen
“Do you want to get goose bumps? Come and check this out!” (Re: Crucible CD – Bad Taste records)
Kuggur, - Undirtónar magazine, Reykjavík, Iceland. (1996)
Tena Palmer, North Atlantic Drift, 2005, Festival Jazz
A spare, introspective and totally captivating mix of jazz and country. Ottawa -based Tena Palmer, who wrote six of these 14 tracks themed on love, loneliness and life on the road, has a fine voice and an easy, intimate delivery. With the barest minimum of backing ( John Geggie on acoustic bass and Dan Artuso on guitars), she creates a moody and enigmatic atmosphere that feels deeply personal. North Atlantic Drift’s cool tone and open acoustic spaces bring Norah Jones, early Cowboy Junkies, and compatriot Leslie Feist to mind.
Ann Lough - LCBO Food & Drink Mag
Tena Palmer
North Atlantic Drift
TLP/Festival
Rating: 4 stars
Tena Palmer, who distinguished herself with Chelsea Bridge, the Ottawa-based Celtic Jazz Quartet, has a disarming and distinctive presence in this session, with bass and guitar accompaniment. Palmer's group won the 1993 award at the Montreal International Jazz Festival for best new Canadian
group. Here she has a decidedly country tinge on 14 tunes, six penned by Palmer. They are verbal collages set off by John Geggie (acoustic bass) and Dan Artuso (acoustic, electric and pedal steel guitars). Palmer has a highly
imaginative if sometimes enigmatic presence as she plays with line and space. Check out Artuso's poignant You Hold on to Me and two wistful versions of Humpty Dumpty Heart, a LaVern Baker favourite.-Irwin Block
RATINGS:
5 stars - instant classic
4 stars - wonderful
Irwin Block - Montreal Gazette May 5, 2005
North Atlantic Drift Tena Palmer TLP /Festival
3 stars ***
Tena Palmer was tough to pin down when she sang with the wonderful Ottawa jazz band Chelsea Bridge in the mid-1990s and she's still tough to pin down here with bassist John Geggie and acoustic, electric and pedal-steel guitarist Dan Artuso. There's as much country in her songs as there is jazz on North Atlantic Drift, although it's country rather the way jazzer Sheila Jordan might sing it -- alternately wistful and wearied, with a touch of sass but mostly a gentle ache that's quietly convincing no matter what the style.
Mark Miller - The Globe and Mail April 29, 2005