Jessica Molaskey: After Midnight

If you’re either a jazz buff who cares about lyrics or a cabaretgoer who tends to dismiss jazz because it’s usually about the music at the expense of the words, we’ve got two words for you: Jessica Molaskey. She’s a jazz singer who comes out of the Broadway tradition — and it makes all the difference in the world. In After Midnight, her fabulous new show at the Algonquin Hotel’s Oak Room, she put a jazz spin on an eclectic variety of songs, but she does so with musical theater acting chops in clear evidence.

You might say that Molaskey is married to jazz, thanks to her being the wife of the great jazz guitarist John Pizzarelli. If he gives her jazz, she gives him a stylish and effective interpreter who makes exquisite acting choices within his arrangements. In her current show, Pizzarelli and his trio play backup to Molaskey’s vocals, and it’s a treat to see her step forward and command the spotlight. Of course, Pizzarelli is nothing if not irrepressible and he has his moments in the show, as well. But they are mostly confined to some wickedly funny banter with his wife, and a couple of very clever duets. For the rest of the evening, Molaskey simply has one of the best backup bands in the world with Pizzarelli on guitar, her brother-in-law Martin Pizzarelli on bass, and Larry Fuller on piano. (She’ll have yet another superb backup band on June 22, 29, and 30 when the Ray Kennedy Ensemble substitutes for the previously committed Pizzarellis.)

Molaskey begins her show on a daring note; rather than opening with an uptempo tune, she starts with Sting’s “Heavy Cloud, No Rain” a wry number that demands that you listen closely to the lyric. She not only sings it well, she acts it so sharply that she pulls the audience in and grabs them in her own very special way. She eases into the jazz idiom with a striding version of the country classic, “Walkin’ After Midnight” and an easy, delicate take on “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter.”

After having established a musical beachhead with three very different songs, she starts to talk. Funny, quick-witted, and entirely in the moment, her patter is a pleasure. It’s even funnier when her husband pipes up and they start kidding around. Their obvious enjoyment of each other is a voyeur’s delight: think of them as a modern day version of Hepburn and Tracy or the jazz version of Nick & Nora Charles.

Finally, though, the show is about Molaskey and the music. She sings Jason Robert Brown’s neo-standard “Stars and the Moon,” which she introduced in Songs From a New World at the old WPA theatre over a decade ago. Her interpretation is perfection, just as it is when she sings something even newer: Michael John LaChiusa’s “There Will be a Miracle” (from See What I Wanna See).

But for all the famous songwriters represented in the show, such as Harold Arlen, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Billy Joel, and Vincent Youmans, the most fun of all were her performances of two songs that she and Pizzarelli wrote together. We were particularly taken with “Knowing You.” It is on the one hand, deliciously personal, while managing to gain a universal appeal. The same can be said of Jessica Molaskey.