Cassandra Wilson for a Sunday – in concert from Melbourne, Australia on April 1998 and preserved for posterity by ABC Radio National.
Wave after wave of bad news, these past few months – the music world has been hit pretty hard, now with the loss of Cassandra Wilson, one of the truly captivating voices coming out of the Jazz world in recent years.
The New York Times wrote in their recent obituary that she led Jazz into the future with warmth and conviction
Associated Press put it this way: Dubbed America’s best singer by Time magazine in 2001, Wilson was best known for her genre-bending voice, which expanded the boundaries of traditional blues-based jazz and worked effortlessly across folk, pop, R&B, country and beyond. At the heart of all her work was her idiosyncratic contralto, a soulful sound distinctly tied to her roots.
As Jon Batiste put it in a eulogy on Wednesday, Wilson sounded like the South.
The steady stream of tributes, the expressions of sadness but gratitude that she was here and made a huge difference for the time she had. That even at 70, there still was much to do.
Well, that’s out of our hands now. Now it’s the legacy we get to fall back on – the notes and phrases she left and the performances like this one.
If you aren’t already familiar with her, it would do you well to grab a seat and press Play for this one. You can tell the audience is beyond excited to see and hear her – maybe that vibe will rub off on you and it prompts some discovering of this priceless practitioner of the sweet vocal art.
Listen and enjoy and take it with you. You got Sunday and you got now. Celebrate.
