| Blues, Jazz |
Summary : At Lincoln Center, jazz vocalist Catherine Russell delivered a powerful tribute to the historic roots of jazz and blues. Drawing inspiration from the Hot Club of New York, she revived rare repertoire linked to the African American musical legacy. With the vibrant participation of tap dancer Michela Marino Lerman, the performance blended history, rhythm, and emotion. The result was an evening that confirmed Russell as one of today’s most authentic interpreters of classic American jazz.
Catherine Russell at Lincoln Center: A Voice That Revives the Golden Age of Jazz and Blues
When an artist like Catherine Russell takes the stage at Lincoln Center, anticipation settles gently over the room. The lights dim, the audience quiets, and the sense of occasion is immediate yet unforced. At the Appel Room, with its sweeping view of Manhattan, the moment feels especially fitting. Russell’s presence there seems less like a headline event than the natural continuation of a musical lineage that stretches across generations.
A leading interpreter of the traditions that bind jazz and blues together, Russell brings to the microphone a voice steeped in lived truth. Each appearance confirms what audiences and critics already know: her artistry is beyond dispute. The emotion she summons can evoke memories of Ella Fitzgerald at her most luminous.
Russell’s authority in this repertoire is hardly accidental. The daughter of the pioneering bandleader and pianist Luis Russell, a central figure in early swing and a collaborator of Louis Armstrong, she grew up surrounded by the living memory of jazz history. Over the past two decades she has built a remarkable career as both interpreter and musical archaeologist, earning Grammy nominations and widespread acclaim for albums that revive overlooked corners of American song.
In this performance, Russell celebrates the historic repertoire of jazz and blues with a blend of scholarship and instinct that few singers possess. The evening is further elevated by the exceptional participation of tap dancer Michela Marino Lerman, whose rhythmic dialogue with the music adds sparkle and historical resonance.
Naturally, the praise has been abundant.
“One of the most celebrated singers in the jazz world… an indefatigable song hunter with a vast and varied repertoire that ranges from cheeky blues to languorous ballads, prewar popular songs and vintage R&B.” — San Francisco Chronicle
“Few contemporary singers convey the nuances of blues feeling and swing phrasing that run through American song with the same accuracy and grace as Ms. Russell, or with such expressive range.”, Larry Blumenfeld, Wall Street Journal
The accolades are well deserved. Few performers reach such depths of authenticity, the kind that sends a shiver down the spine, through the careful choice and interpretation of repertoire. For a special project at the Appel Room, presented during the 2023–2024 season of Jazz at Lincoln Center under the theme Community and Consciousness, Russell devised a program paying tribute to the “Hot Club of New York.”
This informal community of enthusiasts gathers weekly to listen to early jazz and blues recordings preserved on shellac 78-rpm discs. Russell’s selections are anything but random. Each piece resonates, directly or indirectly, with the history of the African American experience.
Drawing on this rich musical heritage, Russell assembled a program filled with overlooked gems originally recorded by artists such as Hot Lips Page, Tiny Grimes, the Jeter-Pillars Orchestra, Blanche Calloway, Cab Calloway, Helen Humes, Eddie Barefield, and others from the golden era of swing and blues.
Among the program’s most memorable moments is Russell’s deeply personal interpretation of “Old Man River,” delivered with quiet gravity and emotional depth. Another highlight comes with the playful swing and sly phrasing she brings to material associated with Cab Calloway’s world, reminding listeners how humor and rhythm were often inseparable in early jazz performance. Each song becomes a miniature act of rediscovery, polished with Russell’s unmistakable warmth and interpretive intelligence.
What emerges from the performance is a portrait of musical culture at its most vibrant: knowledge, craftsmanship and sincerity working in quiet harmony. The result is a show that clearly delighted the audience, and one that promises lasting pleasure for listeners who discover the recording and find themselves returning to it again and again.
Russell’s gift lies in her ability to inhabit these songs so completely that they become her own. The emotions she channels through her voice are both beautiful and rare. Very few singers can risk this kind of interpretive intimacy. It demands formidable vocal mastery, but also the depth of lived experience required to draw from within the emotional resources that such music demands.
As I write these lines in the quiet hour before dawn, when the birds are still asleep and the coffee sends up its first curls of steam across the desk, I find myself recalling the black-and-white television appearances of Ella Fitzgerald that I watched as a child. Listening to this album brings back that same unmistakable feeling.
And perhaps that is the quiet triumph of Catherine Russell’s art: in breathing new life into songs nearly a century old, she reminds us that the history of jazz is not a museum piece. In the right voice, a voice that understands both its weight and its joy, it remains vibrantly, irresistibly alive.
Thierry De Clemensat
Member at Jazz Journalists Association
USA correspondent for Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief – Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News
PARIS-MOVE, March 14th 2026
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Musicians :
Catherine Russell – vocals
Matt Munisteri – guitar
Ben Paterson – piano
Russell Hall – bass
Domo Branch – drums
Jon-Erik Kellso – trumpet
John Allred – trombone
Evan Arntzen – tenor sax, clarinet
Michela Marino Lerman – tap dance (tracks 2, 4, 9, 11)
Track Listing :
Now You’re Talkin’ My Language
Never Too Old To Swing
I Just Refuse To Sing The Blues
I Like Pie, I Like Cake
You Ain’t Livin’ Right
Long About Midnight
Keep Your Mind On Me
Old Man River
If It Ain’t One Thing It’s Another
You Can’t Pull The Wool Over My Eyes
Everybody Loves My Baby