The magical recollection of Blondie insured that this New York-based jazz combo would sell out the medium-sized venue. But in order to stake their ground, they opened with a dizzying instrumental cavort while Ms. Harry sat on the side, just in front of the vibraphone or xylophone rig.
Jazz Passengers consist of a sax player, trombone player, drummer, xylophone player, violinist, and upright bass player, and alternated between bopping groove-outs and more traditional balladeering. All the instrumentalists received frequent time for solos, and the bassist, Jones, anchored the proceedings with alternatively acrobatic and chugging bass lines.
The cartoon-soundtrack opening sequence segued into a ballad and Ms. Harry, clad in a long black skirt and dark sweater, stepped up to the mic to a burst of enthusiasm and then hushed reverence. Her voice unsurprisingly has matured, filled out and become more precise, and was well suited to the material.
Between numbers the band and Harry clowned around, making cryptic references to imagined history, talking about Harry's salad days several centuries before as Baroness of Heidelberg. At the end of the first hour-long set, the band launched into "a popular folk song from the Baroness's time in Heidelberg," a jumpy version of "One Way or Another," during which Harry recalled some of her stadium antics with winks, big smiles, and mic-stand shaking.
The second set opened like the first, the Jazz Passengers stressing that the Baroness has wider tastes than those for which the audience seems willing to give her credit. The band frequently worked from sheet-music and scripts, and Harry repeatedly put on her wire-rimmed glasses to sing along. Still, the band seemed effortlessly fluid, and Harry kept up in a way that points to extensive collective rehearsals. Debbie Harry as middle-aged librarian is an odd sight, but the musical combination glosses any pangs of nostalgia by providing a new and successful context for her vocals.
The middle of the second set was taken up by a rambling musical skit that included musical references to the Wizard of Oz, and climaxed in a song that pit Harry against the sax player as she compared him to a pork chop. Echoes of earlier songs from the set added cohesion to the musical progression throughout, with intertwined melodies and snippets of horn riffs.
The second set finishesd with an extended version of "The Tide is High," which far outshone the original with an exceptional slide bass line, winning chorus harmonies, and scat background vocals. The intimate setting and successful redefinition of Harry's voice left the audience begging for more, and the band indulged them with two lengthy encores.
