When she moved to Chicago from New York a few years ago, Spider Saloff already was an impressively accomplished vocalist.
Since then, though, she has blossomed into a mature and sophisticated song interpreter with technique to burn.
Or, to put it another way, Saloff represents an increasingly rare breed: She is a jazz vocalist who can toss off intricate scat phrases one moment and read a lyric with unusual dramatic insight the next.
To Saloff, there is no distinction between style and substance, perhaps because she offers both in such abundance.
Certainly that was the case Friday night, when Saloff performed in the Metropole Room of Chicago’s Fairmont Hotel. For anyone who treasures music-making at once slyly sophisticated and easily accessible, Saloff stands as a kind of ideal.
In an era when female singers with less voice and not nearly so much finesse are riding the top of the jazz charts, Saloff comes as a breath of fresh air: Here is the unusual case of a vocalist whose gifts exceed her fame, rather than the other way around.
Although Saloff’s first set on Friday evening focused on jazz and cabaret standards, it was what she did with this familiar repertoire that distinguished her.
Consider her reading of “Lover Man,” a tune that forever will bear the mark of Billie Holiday, who recorded it definitively.
Saloff clearly is aware of Holiday’s famous version–you can hear it in the languor of Saloff’s tempo and the melancholy quality of her tone–but the singer nevertheless crafted an interpretation that was of her own making.
By punctuating her phrases with unexpected pauses and silences and by shading each line a bit differently from the last, Saloff made an exquisitely controlled nocturne of the piece.
Most singers who deal in standards treasure the work of Cole Porter, and Saloff is no different in that regard. But her reading of Porter’s “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To” proved distinctive, in part because of Saloff’s coy phrasings and easy swing rhythms.
Porter’s songs respond beautifully to this ultra-chic brand of singing, and Saloff proved the point with every crisply enunciated syllable and carefully measured phrase.
If, during the course of this show, Saloff occasionally oversold a phrase–pushing the volume level a bit beyond the room’s capability–this is a minor point that can easily be fixed.
More important, Saloff remains one of the finest jazz vocalists working in this or any other city.
Eloquently assisted by pianist Tom Hope and bassist Dan DeLorenzo, she is in peak form.
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Spider Saloff performs through Saturday in the Metropole Room of the Fairmont Hotel, 200 N. Columbus Drive. Call 312-565-8000.
