PIanist-singer Patricia Barber headlines Jazz Standard

PIanist-singer Patricia Barber headlines Jazz Standard

Jimmy Katz

Patricia Barber combines a subtly restrained voice and lyrical grace.

Jati Lindsay

Ben Williams and his group Sound Effect are at Jazz Standard.

I remember the first time I saw Patricia Barber perform live.

It was last summer during the Montreal Jazz Festival. Her duet there with fellow pianist Kenny Werner impressed me. I already knew him as a virtuoso. The discovery was Barber’s lyrical intelligence, harmonic acuity and sensitive but strong touch.

She displays an emotional freedom. In Montreal, her voice was crystal cool and subtly restrained as she rocked back and forth, moaning with the grooves while improvising and accompanying her partner.

“I’d been a groupie of Kenny Werner for many years, and he became a friend and mentor,” she says during a recent phone interview. Werner connected Barber with her current manager, Reggie Marshall, and even gave her some important advice.

“Kenny told me that when you get comfortable you should change bands,” she recalls. So she auditioned musicians for a year, eventually finding those who accompany her on a new CD and her upcoming appearance in New York.

Barber, a Chicago native, headlines this week at the Jazz Standard, where she will appear with guitarist John Kregor, bassist Larry Kohut, and drummer Jon Deitemyer. The gig kicks off the East Coast leg of a tour promoting “Smash,” her Concord recording.

The singing songwriter and composer has been building a devoted following for several decades in Windy City rooms like the Green Mill.

She digs her current musical group because they are “quieter, more flexible, and more facile.” They certainly support her well on “Smash,” a record with a lingering sense of loss refracted through potent lyrics that rise to heights of poetry.

“Time may suddenly slip/the present may disappear/like the wake of a ship/the thing itself no longer here,” from “The Wind Song,” is a taste of the wafting waves of imagery Barber sets to music. “Redshift,” an astrophysics reference, is a metaphorical journey through the cosmos with a bossa nova beat.

Barber brilliantly weaves heart and science. She can give listeners the feeling of love slowly departing, like light seen from an object that is moving away. The lyrics of the title cut contain images of dissolution, with a screaming guitar solo amplifying the pain as dreams melt away.

But melancholy isn’t the only vibe. Anger and wit mix on “Devil's Food,” her reaction to the right-wing bashing of gay-marriage efforts across the nation last year. In that song, her graphic lyrical descriptions are softened by an alluring musical styling.

In press materials for the new album, Barber describes what happens during a live performance of “Devil’s Food.” As it becomes clear that “Devil’s Food” is “turning into a gay disco song, it’s really fun watching people’s reactions, which is surprise and delight.”

During the course of writing the songs for “Smash,” Barber suffered several devastating losses, including the death of her mom. She had released her booking agency and slowed down the pace of touring, getting off the fast lane. She spent two years “practicing the piano like crazy,” while also tending her organic farm.