Kate Kortum’s band is rattling the wood-panelled walls of this L-shaped venue – but the singer is nowhere to be seen. Her four college buddies are playing Resignation, composed by the group’s tenor saxophonist Aidan McKeon. Kortum is hovering backstage in a fancy frock, waiting to make a big entrance. It’s an old showbiz trick. And it still works.
Old music is on the menu tonight. Kortum arranged the entire set except the first tune and her affection for swing-era spirit is audible in each syncopated beat. She sings two sets at this long-running spot in Philly on 7 December, alongside McKeon, pianist Tyler Henderson, bassist John Murray and drummer Matthew Lee. The group are student pals from the Juilliard School of Performing Arts and made the short drive south from New York a few hours earlier.
Kortum does a good line in kittenish, hip-bumpy delivery and she frequently reimagines standard ballads to get her old-time kicks. There’s an uptempo, pugnacious rendition of You Don’t Know What Love Is. There’s also an exuberant version of All Of Me. The vocalist tells the audience this song was one of the first she learned and that familiarity shines through as she rushes around the composition’s shadowy corners and secret compartments.
Bessie Smith once resided in the City of Brotherly Love. She’s cited as an inspiration for Kortum’s arrangement of Easy Come, Easy Go Blues. The singer adds a bit of Bessie’s bite to her vowels, while McKeon softens his saxophone’s voice. More often, he plays with a monstrous tone that is somehow centred and broad and modern and nostalgic all at once. Like movie boxer Rocky Balboa, McKeon is a Philadelphian who may prove tough to stop.
Amid all these bold statements, there is one moment of subtlety and restraint. You Are There is a patient piece, more driven by emotion than by desire to showcase up-and-coming chops. The Dave Frishberg composition appeared on Kortum’s debut, Good Woman (Bandstand Presents, 2023). Her next album, Wild Woman, is scheduled for the second half of 2025.
Kortum’s music has an old soul but a young heart. She takes big liberties on every swinging little number and those interpretative skills make her familiar music sound fresh. By the summer of 2025, all five of these youngsters will have wrapped up their studies and will attempt to grab some spotlight on jazz’s already crowded scene. They’ll need all the old tricks and few new ones too. But they might just make a big entrance.