The image you see above wasn’t scraped from Kate McGarry‘s iCloud Photos account nor is it a promo shot, strictly speaking. But as a visual representation of the homey, intimate vibe you’re likely encounter when McGarry, Keith Ganz and Gary Versace visit Bop Stop Thursday night (sans doggo), it’s perfect.
Let’s start with the instrumentation: voice, guitar and piano. No drums. This is music on a conversational level. McGarry, while undoubtedly a jazz singer, doesn’t have what most people consider to be a “jazz voice.” Her high-lying instrument has a clarity and purity that you expect to find in folk or traditional Celtic music, both of which she sings with authority.
Finally, sealing the deal on the en famille vibe is the fact that she and guitarist Ganz are more than musical partners, They’ve been married for 22 years. As for pianist Versace, his musical partnership with McGarry goes back even farther. “I think I had played with Gary in some bands right before Keith and I got together,” she said by phone from their home in Durham, North Carolina. “And then I introduced the two of them.”
The three had played together in larger groups at some of New York’s most intimate listening rooms: the Jazz Standard, Cornelia Street Café and 55 Bar, all sadly gone. “We all like spaciousness in music, those moments when everything sort of clears out,” she said. “So we thought let’s try the trio and see what we get with that, and we really hit that sweet spot of momentum and release into spaciousness.”
That sense of space can be hard to maintain with two harmonic instruments playing harmony, but the trio’s years of collaboration have refined the sound to a silvery weave of voices. Great ears help, too.
“Keith is a very reliable partner in that we both seem to want the same thing when we play, and I think we found a kindred spirit in Gary because of the values of having some kind of freedom and spaciousness and fun. and no holds barred: if you hear it, play it, that kind of feeling,” she said. “And a desire to interact, really caring about what the other person is playing. Let me meet them. So I think the three of us share those values and it’s certainly makes for interesting music.”
Interesting indeed.
Songs You Like A Lot
“Something that has come to me very naturally is to take songs that I grew up with and offer them a jazz context [with] jazz rhythms and harmony, and to remake them into something new,” McGarry said. Jazz musicians do this all the time. By now, Joni Mitchell songs are found on setlists alongside chestnuts by Gershwin, Berlin and Cole Porter—including McGarry’s. Yet what other jazz singer would dare to cover The Eagles (“Desperado”), the Cars (“Just What I Needed”), Peter Gabriel (“Don’t Give Up”), and the Bee Gees (“How Deep Is Your Love?”)?
And it’s not for show. “Most any song that I choose comes from some feeling of necessity, of the moment,” she said. “’The Times They Are a-Changin’ is an arrangement that I did myself. That was a song that was calling to me. It felt like things all of a sudden had become this strange kind of circus, and if you listen to that song, you’ll hear how I use rhythm and theme and harmony in a very different way than Bob Dylan ever did because that’s what that song called for, for me to tell the story now.”
Telling Stories
Fittingly, McGarry and her trio mates will be telling stories in a place that feels like home. She thoroughly enjoyed the vibe of the Hingetown club when she sang with Chuck Owens’ band in 2023. “I just loved the club,” she said. “I loved the energy of it, and I thought Bryan [Kennard} was a good curator and steward of the place. I’ve been to so many clubs throughout the country and throughout the world. When you hit one that has something solid, you take note.”
Kate McGarry / Keith Ganz / Gary Versace Trio Thu, Oct. 22, 7 p.m., BOP STOP, 2920 Detroit Ave., Cleveland, Tickets $25 available here
For the most complete listing of jazz and jazz-adjacent events., look to Jim Szabo’s essential, weekly Northeast Ohio jazz calendar.
