Drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, who was TLC before TLC was TLC, shares the experience with Spalding of being a female jazz prodigy. Carrington, now a wily jazz vet, had a great musical connection with Spalding, but she seemed to have some instinctive understanding of the bassist/singer's off-the-bandstand mind-set as well.
Whether on the pan-South American "Chacarera" - which Carrington drove, along with keyboardist Leo Genovese on charango, in a passionate but muted manner - or on the more straight-ahead samba exercises such as "Winter Sun," the drummer always had the leader's back.
Too much of Spalding's vocal oeuvre depends on forced esotericism; she is certainly talented, but also inconsistent and flawed. Like Ryan Howard (pre-Achilles tear), she hits lots of home runs but also strikes out sometimes when it counts. Also like Howard, when Spalding is good, she is very, very good.
On "Inutil Paisagem," Spalding, with background vocalist Leala Cyr, brought the song together initially as a Zap Mama-meets-Milton Nascimento, Pygmy-chant-inflected, wordless choral jam. The two intoned perfectly and in psychically impeccable rhythmic synchronization, with Cyr's mezzo yin melding with Spalding's sweet yips and her solid bass yang.
Another home run was "Apple Blossom," an elegiac, poetic exercise. In her presentation, Spalding tends to lean toward the melodramatic, but her soft voice and bent posture as she sang into the floor, rather than to her audience, reinforced the subtle beauty of the composition.
And on the night's encore, the gorgeous "Fall In," underneath Spalding's best vocal performance, Genovese gave his best effort of the night with technically superior, tango-inflected, melancholy accompaniment.
