Melissa Morgan brings New York buzz to East Lansing
Jazz singer Melissa Morgan is always in a New York state of mind, but the NBA champion New York Knicks have given her a massive adrenaline boost, just in time for her gig Friday night at the Summer Solstice Jazz Festival.
Morgan spoke with City Pulse the morning after the Knicks nicked the San Antonio Spurs, 107 to 106, in game four of the series, one of the most dramatic comebacks in sports history.
“Hopefully, by the time I get to East Lansing, I can celebrate a Knicks championship,” she said. (They won the next game, clinching the championship.)
The night before, she was riding home on the subway, watching on her phone as the Knicks chipped away at a 29-point halftime deficit. She told the story as giddily as Judy Garland sang her old classic “The Trolley Song.” The train conductor knocked at the window and asked Morgan, “What’s the score?”
“We’re down by five,” she shouted over the engine roar.
“He was stuck in the booth, so I held the phone up so he could watch in between stops,” Morgan said. “Then we were down by one at 30 seconds, scored a bucket, the whole train erupts, and I’m hitting the plexiglass.”
It’s a great time to be a New Yorker.
“To be home at this time — this is one of the reasons I like New York so much,” she said. “The feeling in the neighborhood, on the train, it was so connected. That’s one of the reasons why I love jazz. It doesn’t matter if I’ve known you for 30 years or I don’t know you, we’re all connected because we love this music so much.”
Melissa Morgan Quintet
9 p.m. Friday, June 26
Al and Beth Cafagna Founders’ Stage
As a singer or a sports fan, Morgan loves to share a good story.
“If there’s no story, there’s no point in singing,” she said. “You’re just repeating lyrics. You have nothing to connect to, and neither does the audience. As a jazz singer, storyteller is your first job.”
The story doesn’t have to be explicit. She takes Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo” at a daringly slow tempo, letting that blues feeling go “stealing down to your shoes,” leaving plenty of space for the audience to imagine the backstory.
Her repertoire ranges from timeless jazz standards to blues-inflected ballads, heavy torch songs and half-forgotten nuggets like “Yes, I Know When I’ve Had It,” recorded by Shirley Horn in 1965 and resurrected by Morgan with saucy gusto on her debut album, “Until I Met You.”
With so many eras, styles and subjects to choose from, what does she look for in a song?
“Romance,” she said without hesitation. “It’s all a love story at the end of the day, and if it isn’t striking a chord in your heart, there’s no point in doing it.”
She pours her love of New York into an unlikely vessel for a jazz singer, Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind.”
“I picked that song up in LA, when I was really homesick,” she said. “The songs I pick are like my favorite movies. You can watch whenever they come on TV, and, depending on how you feel in the moment, they pull on different parts of your heart.”
Morgan grew up studying classical piano and voice, and she even considered being an opera singer, but her course changed when she discovered legendary jazz singers (and storytellers) Nancy Wilson, Dinah Washington and Etta Jones.
“Throughout my life, if I needed to feel familiar again, if I needed a reset, jazz is where I felt at home,” Morgan said.
Living in a city where jazz is practically a public utility helped her absorb the art to the utmost.
“New York is where I grew up,” she said. “I went to high school in New Jersey, so everything was a hop, skip and a jump away — Smalls, the Village Vanguard, all the clubs.”
But her grandmother, a classical singer, didn’t approve of her shift to jazz. That’s another story she loves to tell.
“She was one of my soulmates in this life,” Morgan said. “I found out, sadly, at her funeral that she asked my aunt to buy her jazz records, and she was listening to Temple Jazz Radio every day to learn more about it and understand why I love jazz.”
Morgan was deeply touched.
“To find that out after the fact … it’s one of the reasons we’re still connected. She’s not here, of course, but she’s certainly still in the music.”
In 2004, Morgan reached the semi-finals at the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz competition, judged by a formidable panel of jazz legends: Dee Dee Bridgewater, Kurt Elling, Al Jarreau, Quincy Jones, Flora Purim and Jimmy Scott.
“It was terrifying,” Morgan said. “I was hiding in the bathroom, thinking about not going on.”
But she believes “everything happens for a reason.”
“I don’t think I was supposed to win,” she said. “It’s put me in a place where I’ve always felt like an underdog, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Look at the Knicks right now.”
Her performance at the Monk competition was spectacular enough to draw the attention of Robert Woods, founder of the Telarc record label. “I was stunned at how grounded, collected and natural she is at delivering the music and the emotion,” Woods told DownBeat Magazine, declaring her the “real deal.”
“Until I Met You” teamed Morgan up with a dream ensemble, including MSU’s Randy Napoleon on guitar.
Napoleon, artistic director of the Summer Solstice Jazz Festival, assembled what Morgan called a “killer band” to join her this weekend: MSU piano great Xavier Davis (“it doesn’t get better than that,” Morgan said), visiting vibraphonist Chuck Redd (also featured at Saturday night’s vibraphone summit), journeyman New York bassist John Webber and another New York stalwart East Lansing jazz fans will be delighted to discover, Brooklyn-based trumpeter Bruce Harris.
“Bruce and I have known each other since we were 18 years old,” Morgan said. “I haven’t seen him in years, and I haven’t sung with him since we were kids, so this will be a great reunion.”
There will be plenty of classic material, unfamiliar gems and tunes Morgan has made her own, like Nancy Wilson’s 1961 hit “Save Your Love for Me,” but the setlist isn’t set in stone.
“An outdoor festival is a lot different from an indoor venue, but I’m always known to call an audible, and I go with the mood,” she said. “Depending on the crowd, that’s where we go.”
