Melody Gardot

In the studio with Philly's secret jazz superstar.

by Patrick Rapa

Jessica Kourkounis

Between the last note of Melody Gardot's opening song at the Kimmel on Saturday and the first report of one hand against the other triggering an avalanche of applause, there's just a breath, a sliver of near-silence. And, from some anonymous voice in the audience, stage right, a single word fills the fleeting moment.

"Wow."

This show, at a sold-out Perelman Theater, is a homecoming of sorts for Gardot, and she is killing it. Her sultry, pouncing voice makes short work of the autumn chill. She plucks her guitar and swoons over the piano keys. She leans over to pick at the guts of the Steinway for some twinkling dissonance. There's some stomping of strict librarian heels, dalliances into up-tempo swing and romantic soul, and captivating musicianship from her backing trio. Two hours later, Gardot picks up her cane and retreats to the wings. The audience is on its feet.

'Three weeks earlier, she and her band are holed up in MorningStar Studios in North Wales, Pa., where producer Glenn Barratt is helping them prep for a 21-day jaunt across Europe.

It's a time of transition for the tight-knit group. Longtime bassist Ken Pendergast and drummer Charles Staab are still in the picture, but sax player Bryan Rogers has just left the fold for other pursuits. The new guy is Irwin Hall, a young multi-instrumentalist Gardot met just days earlier in Tokyo. In 48 hours they'll be on stage in Copenhagen, so this two-day cram session is crucial to them sounding like a well-oiled machine. They're running through much of Gardot's catalogue song by song, figuring out which ones get the alto sax, which get the soprano or tenor, the flute or clarinet. Before they leave the studio, Barratt will have these sessions burned onto six or seven CDs. Everybody'll transfer the music to their iPods, to study up on the flight out.

They run through "If the Stars Were Mine," a peppy little lullaby from Gardot's latest album, My One and Only Thrill. She's sitting at the piano, but rolling her fingers along an acoustic guitar and breathing a string of whimsical nonsense syllables into the mic. Done wrong, scatting can be really corny — she knows; she smiles every time she does it — but Gardot's light touch and perfect pitch usually see her through. The conversation right now is whether this song calls for playful flute or sturdy sax.

"Let's handle it like a Getz tune," she says to Hall. "You listen to The Bossa Nova Years at all?"

"Yeah."

"OK, if you wanna talk around the vocal a little bit like that, and then play some long notes under things — let's see where the max is for you to play."

They run through it again before breaking for dinner. They've been working nonstop since about 11 a.m., and will probably keep at it deep into the night. Once the boys are all out the door, Gardot grabs her cane and steps outside for fresh air and a smoke break.

She's 24 now; six years ago she almost died when a car hit her as she biked across Second and Callowhill. She suffered injuries to her head, pelvis and spine, and to this day deals with neurological effects: short-term memory loss, photosensitivity (that's why you never see her without sunglasses) and bouts of vertigo (hence the cane). Her incredible survival story — and the corresponding music-as-therapy subplot — used to dominate The Melody Gardot Story. But once the world heard 2008's Worrisome Heart (recorded here at MorningStar) and this year's major-label follow-up, My One and Only Thrill (Verve/Universal), her success became multidimensional, especially overseas.

She loves Philadelphia, but home right now is where her two big red suitcases are. She's not sure what city she's in most often. "I'd have to take a tally. I've been in France a lot, in Paris. But that's because the album is doing really, really good there. I just got a note last week that it went, uh, platinum. So I was freaking out. I don't know what that means, but I know it's not the bottom. It's not ramen noodles."

HALF OFF DEPOT

Why live life at full price?

You might not know it from the enthusiastic reception at the Kimmel on Saturday, but Gardot's not a big star back home, probably because she has yet to play more than a few gigs in the states. "I can still go out in airplane clothes," she laughs. "It's very funny. It's actually like full-blown L.A. paparazzi in France." Fans, she says, swarm her for autographs and snap her picture through car windows as she's shuttled from one radio station to the next.

Next month she's back in Europe, playing London, Zurich, Munich and so on. She's especially proud of selling out the famed Olympia Theatre in Paris. "I remember playing the Tin Angel, for, my cut was $5. Because we were getting $25 as an opener and there were five of us. And then a percentage went to the guy who booked us."

'"When you think about it, you never play the same song twice, anyway."

Trying out a new soloist and, essentially, reinventing her act song by song has Gardot thinking about the fragility of the moment. "My opinion has always been that when you make a record you should strive to do the same thing live, if not better. My ears were going bigger bigger bigger," she says.

"But I'm at this place now where I'm considering the record like a painting." She loved to paint before music became her life. "No artist could actually repaint a canvas in an hour, when that canvas took like three months — and a larger amount of musicians. It was like my palette was bigger. It had more colors.

"Now I've come to this place where I feel really good about giving a sketch."

Nothing about the Kimmel show felt like a sketch. Gardot and co. clicked like a fine timepiece, with Hall — the new kid just three weeks before — belting out a bold solo on two saxophones at once. And Gardot looked like a queen on her throne, telling stories and making them swoon with mature, confident songs about love, lovers and life. She caps off the evening with a Latin-tinged take on "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."

Back at MorningStar, she lets smoke slip gently from her mouth, and takes a second to marvel at where her music has taken her so far. "In the musical field, people just basically hand me paint tubes and say go."

(pat@citypaper.net)