Allegra Levy is a lyricist who writes with a memoir-like directness about love and the complexity of relationships.
With a new CD just released and herself ensconced in the middle of an extended, plum engagement at Hong Kong’s Four Seasons Hotel, Allegra Levy has many triumphant thoughts to savor. The savvy 24-year-old singer/songwriter from West Hartford flies home more than 8,000 miles for a quick stateside visit to promote her debut album in two performances, one in New York City, the other in Hartford.
Levy will be home this month to celebrate her new album, Lonely City (SteepleChase Lookout), with a CD release party/performances on Tuesday, November 25 at New York’s Cornelia Street Café, and in an especially festive homecoming appearance at 8:30 pm on Saturday, November 29, at Hartford’s Black-eyed Sally’s. For the return to her old stomping grounds in Hartford, Levy will be accompanied by Sean Clapis, guitar; Tim Norton, bass; Sean McCluskey, keys; Matt Rousseau, drums, plus special guests. Admission: $10.00. Reservations: (860) 278-7427.
Levy was on a natural high well before boarding her flight home for her New York and Hartford gigs thanks to the November 10 release date for her new disc. Lonely City is not only a showcase for her vocal craftsmanship, but also for her skills as a composer, with a knack for lyrical melodies, and as a lyricist who writes with a memoir-like directness about love and the complexity of relationships. Her CD’s eleven original songs resonate with candor about affairs of the heart, requited and unrequited, the excitingly new and the nostalgically old.
“This album is truly a reflection of myself,” Levy said by email from Hong Kong a few days before returning to the States. “It’s emotional, longing, conversational, and persevering. I think I’m not one to keep my emotions at bay, which isn’t always a good thing, and this is a pure expression of my emotions. The music was written when going through different difficult times as a young woman in the trials and tribulations of relationships, love, loss, and the beginning of independence.”
As a songwriter, Levy has been inspired by the Great American Songbook canon written by venerable songwriters ranging from Cole Porter to Henry Mancini. Plus she has also been inspired, she said, by the jazz-inflected hipness and strong, intimate storytelling songs of the great Joni Mitchell. Artistically, Levy’s tunes are tempered by her love for the classic traditions of song writing. This aesthetic and historical consciousness is seasoned with a distinctly contemporary sensibility echoing through her lyrics. As part of her signature style, she loves to play on the seeming paradox of life’s contradictory mixes, whether of old and new styles, or lyrics that are simultaneously self-deprecating yet defiant, or moods that are deeply introspective, then dance as a celebration of life.
Although Levy digs into standards in live performances, on Lonely City she adopts a deliberately bold, even quite risky strategy by devoting her entire repertoire to her own original songs, bypassing the more secure path of presenting safely familiar evergreens. Her singing is rooted in a similar sort of artistic declaration of independence. Instead of just going along with the fashionably loud and flashy style of the moment, she wrings meaning through nuanced inflection and expressive phrasing.
It isn’t that Levy can’t emote or that she can’t scat, which she does do several times to fine effect on Lonely City. Scatting is her route for improvising, an effective wordless contrast to what she calls her “lyric-centric songs.” Unlike some singers, she doesn’t use or abuse scatting for empty, pyrotechnical displays. Nor does she subscribe to the faith that louder is better, loudest is best, and that sheer volume is the one true measure of emotional depth and technical mastery.
Besides deliberately staking out her independent turf as singer and songwriter, Levy has also chosen, again courageously, to present her original music in an uncompromisingly genuine jazz setting stocked with solid, tasty charts and a cast of strong supporting players. The album was produced by the noted trumpeter/arrangerJohn McNeil, who was one of her key mentors at Boston’s New England Conservatory from which she graduated in 2011.
Exuding the feeling of a live performance, the studio recording features drummerRichie Barshay, a rising star, also from West Hartford, who has played with Herbie Hancock,Chick Corea andEsperanza Spalding; bassist Jorge Roeder, tenor saxophonist Adam Kolker, guitarist Steve Cardenes, trumpeter John Bailey, the excellent pianist/arranger Carmen Staaf and, generating a bright, classical resonance in a glowing cameo role, violinist Mark Feldman.
Levy acknowledges helping hands from many mentors in her young life, including McNeil at the conservatory and, earlier on in high school, the legendary Connecticut jazz educator John Mastroianni along her journey to the discovery of her own voice as a singer and songwriter.
But from day one, Levy also realizes, she was blessed by growing up in a home filled with the sound of jazz and with the unstinting support of loving parents. That nurturing home front environment set her on a path towards involvement in the remarkable jazz program at West Hartford’s William Hall High School, a hothouse for many now full-grown talents, including the internationally renowned pianist/composerBrad Mehldau, his classmate, the noted tenor saxophonistJoel Frahm, and a host of other highly successful jazz musicians, including Richie Barshay.
Reflecting on her exceptional experience at Hall (Class of 2007), Levy said, “I still am mystified at the fact that I managed to grow up in a place where the jazz band was as cool as the football team -- okay, cooler in my opinion -- and the jazz dancers were more popular than the cheerleaders.”
Levy also had the advantage of growing up in a tight-knit home presided over by parents who are word-addicted, jazz-loving writers for whom words rule. Levy’s father, Harlan Levy, is a consumer columnist and business reporter at the Journal Inquirer in Manchester. Her mother, Patricia Weiss Levy, was a staff writer for The Hartford Courant’s former Northeast Magazine. She now writes at NiceJewishMom.com. Her older brother, Aidan Levy, is a jazz journalist on staff at JazzTimes, and writes a weekly column about jazz for The Village Voice.
Not surprisingly, music has been Levy’s thing from childhood, through high school, several summers at The Litchfield Jazz Camp, and her studies at the conservatory. As far back as any of the Levys can recall, she literally grew up singing, virtually all the time. “I would hear Allegra in her room,” her mother recalls, “and often call, ‘Stop singing and do your homework!’ Only later did it turn out that she would choose to attend the New England Conservatory, a music college where acceptance is based on the audition, rather than grades or SAT scores. So what I should have been calling was, ‘Stop doing your homework and start singing!’”
With the new album out, and her Hong Kong stint running out at the end of January, Levy plans to spread the word about Lonely City in the U.S. and perhaps in Asia as well, while also working on new songs for her next recording.
“I want to continue to pursue a career in jazz, but also go on more adventures, as I believe I’ve been bitten by the travel bug,” Levy said, admitting that she was initially “terrified” about leaving her digs on Roosevelt Island in New York City to take the seven-month residency engagement in Hong Kong. “Now no place is scary to me anymore,” she said of playing anywhere in the world. “As long as there’s jazz, it’s only just a home away from home.”
Black Art Jazz Collective
Power-packed and inspired by historic African American icons, the super band Black Art Jazz Collective presents back-to-back nights of expressive, original music as it performs Friday, November 28, and Saturday, November 29, at the Side Door Jazz Club at 85 Lyme Street in Old Lyme.
With a lineup featuring the jazz equivalent of an NBA championship team, the collective all-stars are: trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, tenor saxophonist Wayne Escoffery, trombonist James Burton, pianist Xavier Davis, bassist Gerald Cannonand drummer Johnathan Blake. The wellspring of the collective’s inspiration is its dedication to celebrating African American cultural and political icons, as well as preserving the historical significance of African Americans in jazz.
Celebrating its premiere appearance in Connecticut at the red-hot shoreline jazz club, the band made its national debut in 2012 with a three-night engagement at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola in New York City. Among its original pieces is Escoffery’s Double Consciousness, inspired by the writings of W.E.B. Dubois (1868-1963), the great African American scholar, author, sociologist, historian, and civil rights activist. Admission: $38.50. Downbeat time for both shows at 8:30 pm. Doors open at 7:30. Information: thesidedoorjazz.com and (860) 434-0886.
Omar’s Jazz/Mex Mix
Mexican guitarist Omar Tamez, a master of multiple genres, combines jazz with the spiritual and traditional music of his homeland at 8:00 pm on Friday, November 28, at The Buttonwood Tree Performing Arts and Cultural Center at 605 Main Street in Middletown.
His collaborators are the noted cutting-edge bassistJoe Fonda, drummer Lou Grassiand the celestially expressive pianist Angelica Sanchez. A native of Phoenix, Arizona, Sanchez has risen to prominence thanks to her flights of imagination since migrating from the American Southwest to New York City’s cutting-edge scene in 1995.
You’ll get to hear Sanchez soar angelically on a beautifully restored 1912 Steinway grand, which was just recently given as a gift to The Buttonwood. A neighborly, grassroots, avant-garde venue, The Buttonwood proudly proclaims itself a creative center “for all ages, all comers, artists and audiences.” Admission: $10,
Fine Way with a Steinway
On the next night, Saturday, November 29 at 7:30, the grateful Buttonwood presents “A Musical Offering in Celebration and Gratitude for Our New Piano,” featuring a performance by the classical pianist Carolyn Halsted on the 102-year-old grand piano.
A peripatetic pianist and educator, Halsted has taught from Chennai, India, to Wesleyan University in Middletown, and performs frequently as a soloist, accompanist and chamber musician, collaborating with members of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, CONCORA (a premier Connecticut choral ensemble) and the Coast Guard Band, among other settings.
Displaying her fine way with a Steinway, she’ll play works by Bach, Beethoven and Liszt, as well as original pieces as part of the official christening for the born-again grand. Admission: $10.00. Information: (860) 347-4957.
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