Still Life

Sometimes I think it's me. Maybe I have a "problem" with female singers. Or maybe jazz really is dead and that's why Krall and Karrin and Monheit bore me to madness with their tiresome twittery standards. And then I hear someone like Lynn Bush and realize that jazz lives plenty and so does my heart. She won't win awards for prettiest voice or most pristine technique, but shit, computers, and computer-like performers can supply that now. Bush has what those ladies all lack: the power to make a lyric mean something, and a natural musicality that's too real and too subtle to ever be showy. She's partial to under-exposed standards, but can also make a tune like "invitation" sound like she just dreamed it up. Backing her tonight, as on her recent Origin disc, "Still Life," is Seattle's premier piano trio, New Stories, who, unlike me, seem to have a special chemistry with singers.