Event

Mala Waldron Trio

Mala is the jazz legend, Mal Waldrons daughter and Billie Holiday was her godmother.
But first of all, Mala Waldron is an accomplished vocalist. She has travelled the world performing for audiences from the USA to Russia. She plays piano rather well, accompanying herself as she sings in a silken contralto with a whispering vibrato so apt for the sensuous, soulful songs that she composes.
She is a wonderful writer whose lyricism puts her in a class by herself. She tells stories which are riveting. In live as well studio settings Waldron performs in the intimacy of a duo and a trio but she has been heard by rapt audiences in Europe, with a large orchestra as well. Clearly Mala Waldron has a lot going for her.
She sings with a perfectly shaded mixture of power and melancholic sensitivity, her vocal phrasing neatly dovetailing with the contrapuntal eloquence of the trombone and percussion, the cello and bass flute and the fretless bass. The poetry of her music compares life to the wind, the wistful observation that beauty is that very life itself which unfolds in a myriad of situations, and each time she learns something more about that beauty.
Waldrons narratives navigate through dramatic contrasts, vivid imagery and wide leaps across a range of more than two and a half octaves no mean feat when youre in mostly duo setting with instruments of variable pitch and played with subtly changing rhythm as well.