The traditional jazz world pays homage to the blues, but often in a narrow way. There are glimpses of famous streets in fabled cities, tin roofs, and royal gardens. But few musicians in that world now seem to have given themselves wholly to the blues and the music of that often overlooked city, St. Louis. And no one is doing what the singer Valerie Kirchhoff (perhaps known to some readers as “Miss Jubilee”) and her husband, pianist Ethan Leinwand, are doing right now. This musically impassioned pair offers repertoire rarely heard, with joyous playfulness.
Were I to describe them to someone who’d never encountered them, I would speak of serious joy and an exuberance anchored in a long immersion in the music they love. On the bandstand, Valerie is constantly in uncontrived motion, her expressive resonant voice giving life to songs that speak of deep emotion. The first time I saw her, I thought she reminded me of a hybrid of Connee Boswell and the 1932 Bennie Moten band, delicate and powerful at once.
Alongside her, Ethan creates a constantly moving landscape of sound: stabbing right-hand figures against a powerful left hand, the result anything but formulaic, creating a genuinely lowdown groove no matter what the tempo. If they were to perform in a church in bright daylight, their music would invent a small room, a welcoming darkness. One could envision people holding glasses o
