Singer/saxophonist Grace
Kelly took the stage at Hochstein Performance Hall Saturday night surrounded
by three Clark Kents: Pete McCann on guitar; Evan Gregor, bass; and Jordan Perlson,
drums. All three bespectacled men wore drab, everyday clothing, which served to
focus most of the attention on Kelly in her chain-link miniskirt. She looked
great, but it was a bit disconcerting to watch a beautiful 20-year-old woman
who seemed to have the musical soul of a 1950’s hard-bop sax player. Let’s just
say Hank Mobley never had to worry about straps falling down.

The Exodus To Jazz series, which had to cancel several
concerts due to poor ticket sales just a few months ago, drew an enthusiastic
audience of 426 for the Kelly show, its second-largest
ever. Kelly gave patrons an excellent concert, mixing her saxophone prowess
with jazz vocals and examples of her contemporary songwriting. The songwriting
was the only uneven element, ranging from the beautifully composed “Eggshells”
to the cliché-ridden “Don’t Box Me In.”

The good news is her new material is her best. “Autumn Song,”
an instrumental meant to evoke leaves changing colors and falling from trees,
actually kind of conjured up that image. A New Orleans-style blues march nicely
captured the flavor of early jazz. And her ability to win over an audience with
her playful personality has never been stronger.

Rochester jazz fans have had a rare opportunity with Kelly.
She performed at the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival in both 2010
and 2011, so many in the audience were seeing her for
the third time in three-and-a-half years. We’ve watched as she’s grown from a
teen-aged wunderkind into a formidable, mature saxophonist. Still, mixing in
some sexy pop-star tropes (one of her main career role-models is crossover
artist George Benson) creates some interesting dichotomies. For instance, when
Kelly plays a particularly slithering run on her alto sax, she is also
slithering.

Kelly mixed it up nicely throughout her sets, shifting
between full-band instrumentals and vocal tunes. On her free-scatting rendition
of “Bye Bye Blackbird,” in which she riffed about how
good it was to be back in Rochester, she was accompanied only
by Gregor on bass. She also pared down the
sound with a fine saxophone and bass version of Thelonious
Monk’s “’Round Midnight.”

But the highlights of the night for me were two classics transformed
by Kelly into irresistible funk. Bill Withers’ “Ain’t
No Sunshine” received a gritty treatment punctuated by Kelly’s best solo flight
of the night. The final tune, George Gershwin’s “Summertime,”
sounded more like the “Theme From Shaft” due to McCann’s ubiquitous wah-wah guitar. But it somehow worked. By then all of the
Clark Kents had made full transformations into
musical supermen. McCann was especially versatile, ranging from Grant Green-style
legato runs to Jimi Hendrix-like pyrotechnics. “Summertime” wasn’t actually the final tune, because a
standing ovation brought Kelly back for a beautiful rendition of “Over The
Rainbow.”

This article appears in Jan 23-29, 2013.