LIZZ WRIGHT with Kenny Banks Sr.

City Winery NYC presents LIZZ WRIGHT with Kenny Banks Sr. for the release of ‘Nearness’ album on Sunday, October 4th, at 7:30pm!

The singer Lizz Wright — who owns one of the most spellbinding voices of her generation, regardless of genre — remembers the first time she heard her dear pianist Kenny Banks Sr. perform. It was at the Atlanta Jazz Festival, where Banks was onstage with the vocalist Audrey Shakir, a regional legend. Wright was a freshman at Georgia State University; the daughter of a minister, she was raised on the music of the Black American church. Banks was already a respected player on the Atlanta scene who was working toward his master’s in jazz studies from GSU. “I remember walking behind the seated folks out on the lawn and watching him accompany her,” Wright recalls. “And I literally prayed very quietly, like, ‘God, I don’t know how, but I’ve got to play with him.’

“There was something very compelling about the way he played,” she continues. “It was so lyrical and passionate and it sounded like a voice. And I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”

Soon enough, her prayers were answered. At a jam session in Atlanta, Wright sat in while Banks was on the keys and sang a couple of jazz standards — at the time, the only ones she knew. But the crowd wanted more, so the band settled on “Amazing Grace” off the cuff. “He played it as a blues, and he kind of scared me because I’d never sang like that in my life,” Wright says. “I’d never sung a blues. I’d never felt prayer and longing and lust and confusion at the same time. And the sound came out with all those things.”

“It was bananas,” Banks recalls, beaming. “I think that’s why we still have that in our repertoire.”

But what of that voice — that spectacular instrument the New York Times once described as “a smooth, dark alto possessed of qualities you might associate with barrel-aged bourbon or butter-soft leather”? Was it already in place at that formative jam session? “Absolutely. One-hundred percent,” Banks says. “You know when you hear people say, ‘You’ve got that thing’? She always had that thing. She’s just got a presence that commands your attention.”

Thus began a quarter-century-long adventure in which Banks became one of Wright’s most trusted collaborators, appearing on her 2003 major-label debut, Salt, and then on such acclaimed albums as The Orchard, Fellowship, Freedom & Surrender, Grace and Shadow.

Now comes Nearness, from Blues & Greens Records and Candid Records, the most thrillingly intimate expression of their kinship yet. The new LP, produced by longtime musical director and esteemed guitarist Chris Bruce, features just Wright and Banks, on piano and organ, traversing 11 jazz standards and spirituals. For Wright, this streamlined format constitutes both a paring back and a bold leap forward, and its effect can be breathtaking. Nearness is an extraordinary showcase for each artist’s sheer ability and experience. But more than that, it serves as a master class in the clairvoyance and faith that defines collaboration at its apex. It’s an album well over two decades in the making — and it sounds like it.

Following that first jam session, Banks essentially took Wright under his wing, helping her to learn the etiquette around jazz performance, develop her repertoire and even lead a group. Wright aspired to perform within the band rather than out front, to deliver her melodies and improvisations with the same fiery spontaneity as her sidemen. “Kenny was the one who showed me how to relate to a band in a way where you could be respected,” she says. (In recent years, Wright has studied piano with Banks. His lessons, she says, allow her to find passion and enjoyment in practice, “taking joy into the depths of discipline.”)

They bonded quickly and profoundly, on the strength of their shared background in the church — including improvisation-rich testimony services — and their interests in swinging jazz, R&B and other music. In Banks, Wright found the ideal ally, whose personality and approach offered the best kinds of dualities: He was both a hyper-organized, immensely gifted arranger and a bold, wide-open performer who loved to discover new pathways on the spot. He’s laidback and funny, even goofy sometimes, and an absolute professional.

That sense of harmonious give and take is heard throughout Nearness, whose repertoire developed organically and whose arrangements reflect Banks’ meticulousness as well as his penchant for adventure. There are jazz standards, including “The Nearness of You,” “All the Things You Are” and a take of “Just You, Just Me” inspired by Nat King Cole and Banks’ joyful teachings. A version of Norman Mapp’s “Jazz Ain’t Nothin’ But Soul,” shot through with the requisite Betty Carter pluck, takes Wright back to her scrappy early career, when she “wore suits and sold car insurance” by day and wrote music at night.

A series of spirituals — “Soon I Will Be Done,” “Hold On,” “Deep River,” her favorite, sung here with operatic scope — underscores the historical reverence Wright holds for these songs and the ancestry they descend from. As Banks points out, there are important stylistic distinctions between the spiritual tradition and gospel, and Wright is a rare singer who not only understands those distinctions but has the regal depth and magnitude to sing spirituals with conviction.

“[Singing spirituals] feels like taking old tools out of a museum and running them along a grinder and getting them sharp again and shiny,” she explains. “If I do my part in taking them out of historical reference mode, I really can bring something new to them.”

The same goes for “Amazing Grace,” overflowing with bluesy soul as it did all those years ago, and “How I Got Over,” which carries a number of evocations for Wright: hearing Mahalia Jackson’s version at her grandmother’s house, then, after losing that grandmother, being consoled at the funeral by her family — and by her devoted friend Kenny. “He surprised me when he burst through the back door of that humid little church, a blue suit in a sea of black,” she says. “I was so lost in grief I wasn’t sure he was real at first.”

The arrangement, just voice, organ and handclaps, is proof of how compelling the spirit can be even in a minimalist format. It’s also proof of how absolute Banks’ technique is — how he brings big-band dimensions to solitary accompaniment. Or, as Banks puts it with a laugh, “I can’t rely on that drummer to pull me along ’cause I am the drummer.”

A pair of originals rounds out the program. “Hold Me,” with music by Banks and words by Wright, comes off like a classic ’40s-era songbook standard that never was. And “Circling,” a co-written song first tracked for Shadow, stands as a stirring a cappella coda.

The album title comes from the opener, Hoagy Carmichael’s “The Nearness of You,” one of Wright’s favorite standards. “I’m excited to be able to use that one word to explore concepts of love and closeness that are not often mentioned,” Wright says. “I’m celebrating not just a teacher here, but a great platonic love.” (opens in a new tab)

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