MELODIES // groove
H
aving recently moved to the Jackson area, my quest for the local jazz scene took me to a fortunate encounter with a performer who has a lot to say: Pam Confer. For those who know her, that sounds like a weak joke. Confer is an award-winning public speaker and trainer who works mostly in the public sphere. With that background, Confer understands the intricate nuances of communicating any message to an audience. Confer is a gifted singer who chose a simple and true name for her band: Jazz Beautiful. When I first saw her at circa and listened to her singing, my impression was that she’s completely comfortable doing what she does. She can chat in between the last verse of a song while the keyboardist is playing his solo, as she goes around the table greeting people, before going back to tag the tune to an end. At this point, I started to realize that Confer was not only singing jazz and soul standards. She was opening up to the audience, looking for faces and personalities—something that even full-time and experienced jazz musicians frequently are not able to do, as they are trapped in their own style. That’s a turning point many musicians want to get to without knowing exactly how—a level of refinement in music-making that makes the final result turn out simple.
Modern Mythology
Pam Confer makes jazz beautiful.
With Confer, this immediate simplicity of her attitude also sounds as clear as a beautiful feminine voice can sound. Her tone is warm, and the way she plays with the melodies is pleasant and entertaining. “I’m just a common person who likes to interact,” she says. She chose the name Jazz Beautiful based on what she thinks the music has to be—an
Courtesy Caroline Crawford
Winter 2011
everyday resource for people to overcome difficulties. She is a cover singer, but if you’re lost in thought listening to her, it may take a while to realize she’s singing a well-known standard. My quest for the local jazz scene is far from over, but it’s definitely off to a good start. To learn more about Jazz Beautiful, email Confer at pam@conferconsulting.com.
// by Amanda C. Barber
J
Caroline Crawford sings tales with a textured aura.
82
// by Marcelo Vieira
Camille Moenkhaus
Jazz Conferred
ackson singer, songwriter and pianist Caroline Crawford not only composes and performs her original music, she can also bewitch you with covers of Tool’s “Enema” or Metallica’s “St. Anger.” She might even play you a Cole Porter song. When asked to describe her creative process, Crawford becomes pensive. “It’s mostly based off of some feeling, and that’s the part I can’t describe,” she says. “It’s very slow. (The ideas) may come as one line for a year, or three or four measures of a melody. They just stick around. They hover and wait.”
Crawford, 35, has an eloquent way of stating obtuse ideas. “One of my favorite quotes is by author Tom Robbins. He said, ‘I want to send my readers crystals.’ I just always loved that. It makes no sense, but at the same time I understand it,” she says. “In the same way that I make that sentence my own, we all make music our own,” she says. The full-time psychology major at Millsaps College released her debut album, “Delphian,” in September. The piano-driven, guitarinterlaced work weaves a textured, alternative aural experience. “I read a lot of books,” Craw-
ford says. “When I write music, I read a lot of nonfiction because I like to look for parallels in history, psychology, philosophy and especially in mythology. I like to kind of rewrite mythological stories.” These stories creep into her work and settle. The song “Saturnalia” references the winter solstice celebration. “Lilitu” draws on the tale of Lilith, a demonic female character of mythology. “We just have to keep modernizing them to make it fit,” she says. “That’s where a lot of my writing inspiration comes from.” To learn more, visit her blog, carolinecrawford.wordpress.com. boomjackson.com