Universal Hall, Findhorn, Monday 9 August 2004

Niki Haris

SEVENTEEN YEARS as Madonna’s backing singer and choreographer can hardly have failed to pay off in terms of stage presence, and Niki Haris was having nothing to do with the staid conventions of presentation that prevail in jazz singing. Having began by gently chiding the sound desk because she could not hear herself in her monitor, she proceeded to cover every inch of the Universal Hall floor space available to her, while pretty much ignoring the monitor completely.

If her sassy stage show was derived from the pop music side of her activities, she has a genuine jazz lineage in her family as well. Her father was jazz pianist Gene Harris, although she has adopted Haris as her preferred style (both spellings are arbitrary – his real name was Haire).

She has a genuine love for the music that came across in everything she did, whether a familiar standard like ‘Cheek to Cheek’ or ‘My Romance’, or a rhythm and blues borrowing like ‘Down Home Blues’ or ‘You Made Your Move Too Soon’, delivered in impressively raunchy fashion.

Her singing style drew on jazz, soul, rhythm and blues and a touch of gospel in various permutations, but was always expressive, whatever the combination. She was equally convincing in raw, uptempo songs and in gentle ballads, and has a gift for communication with her audience that quickly won over a full house in a hot and sweaty Universal Hall.

She brought her regular pianist, San Francisco-based Karen Hammack, with her, and was joined by bassist Andy Cleyndert and special guest Herlin Riley on drums. That is a superb trio by any standards, and they remained alert to every twist, turn and verbal digression – and there were plenty of those – in her scintillating performance.

© Kenny Mathieson, 2004