Janette Mason can’t just cover a song straight. A passionate musician with a subversive imagination, she has to add her own touches. In 2014 she released an album, D’Ranged, where she reinvents pop and soul classics including Aretha Franklin’s ‘I Say a Little Prayer’, the Bee Gees’ ‘How Deep is Your Love’, and David Bowie’s ‘Lady Grinning Soul’.
In an interview with The House That Soul Built, Mason explained the creative process (or lack thereof) behind her ‘d’rangements‘: ‘Literally, I will sit down and start playing it and it will guide me. It may sound weird but there’s a way it will work and a way it won’t.’
In her current tenure as Hideaway’s musical director, Mason has annual residencies dedicated to the songbooks of George Michael, Aretha, Bowie, Stevie Wonder, Prince and others. The formula provides for an excellent live gig: tried-and-tested songs, spun uniquely by Mason, and rendered by London’s top session musicians and vocalists.
While she can flip a song totally on its head if she so desires, Mason’s show at Pizza Express Live last Saturday featured some of her more subtle, nuanced reinventions. Clever touches, such as the punchy horn work on Dusty Springfield’s ‘Son of a Preacher Man’, or the jazz swoon of Stevie Wonder’s ‘I Wish’, demonstrated that ‘d’rangements‘ need not be overtly transgressive to be effective.
On vocals for the evening were Mary Pearce and Lily Dior. Pearce boasts impressive backing vocal credentials (Mica Paris, Beverley Knight, Chaka Khan, Lionel Richie) as well as a long-term stint with Boy George (‘Boy George pays my mortgage‘ she remarked). Hailing from Australia, Dior has spent the past few years in London cementing her reputation as a respected jazz vocalist.
‘(It’s Just) Your Love’, an obscure cut from Aretha Franklin’s comeback album Jump To It (1982), written and produced by Luther Vandross, honed in on Pearce’s thick lower register. She also bravely and confidently handled a piano-driven take on Stevie Wonder’s ‘All in Love is Fair’. Dior took the lead on versions of The Stylistics’ ‘People Make The World Go Round’ and jazz standard ‘Sunday Kind of Love’. She sings with technique and cabaret polish, punctuating phrases with jazzy twang and rising into throaty highs. The most radical take of the evening was Cheryl Lynn’s ‘Got To Be Real’, an arrangement where Mason taps into the song’s latent sex appeal by slowing down the groove. It is sung by Vula Malinga on the D’Ranged album. Whereas Malinga plays into her upper register, Pearce on lead vocal finessed her commanding alto.
Mason also featured two of her budding students from Bradfield College where she currently teaches jazz. Elise Golding and Haydn Bardoe each to the stage, performing Dusty Springfield’s ‘I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself’ and George Michael’s ‘Jesus To a Child’ respectively. Both showed promise, from Golding’s lilting tones to Bardoe’s tender falsetto.
(Image copyright: Janette Mason)
