Singer Lisa Nobumoto knows a thing or two about jazz history. In fact, when she lived in Los Angeles, she was a protégé of tenor saxophone pioneer Teddy Edwards, and that experience made an indelible impression on her voice and life.
All of her talent and experience will be on full display tonight, when Lisa Nobumoto and Her Sizzling Six will be featured in the Memphis Public Libraries’ Five Fridays of Jazz online music series.
“I’ve been playing with a sextet for the past 32 years,” she notes. “And the original players included Jimmy Cleveland and Teddy Edwards, but there were different instrumentalists. I played with them for four years in L.A., where we were voted the number one unsigned artist by Music Connection magazine.”
Now she’s put together a Memphis version of the group, and they’ve been playing locally for the past few years. “We’re also playing June 27th at the Railgarten,” she says. “Last time we played there, it was packed!”
Tonight’s performance will have a bittersweet quality, as it marks the group’s first show since saxophonist Michael Krepper passed away last year. “He used to play Teddy Edwards’ parts,” Nobumoto says. “Teddy wrote all my arrangements for the sextet. I have about 60 arrangements by him.”
Another event on April 9-10 also honored Krepper’s memory, as Nobumoto staged a massive audio and video recording production of her self-penned tribute to Nancy Wilson. “I put the big band together myself. Mike Krepper was supposed to do that. The show is dedicated to him. He was supposed to take care of the band part, but he passed away last year,” she says.
And what a band she put together: a twenty piece orchestra of the finest Memphis players, plus guest pianist Eric Reed, who teaches at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
The recording session, an event in its own right, was the realization of a show that had been scheduled for last April. “Then Covid came along, and our rehearsals slowly came to a halt,” says Nobumoto.
Determined to carry on, the group staged the recording session that will be released as a video and CD later in the year. “What we did was, we took all the chairs out of the Memphis Drum Shop and made it into a rehearsal studio. And we did our recording there. All the guys in the band are from Memphis, though we had a special guest coming into town, a pianist named Eric Scott Reed. He teaches at UT Knoxville. He used to have a band back in L.A., and I had my band, the sextet with Teddy Edwards. I was like 28! At the time, I recorded with Teddy and had a release on Polygram. And recently I was talking to one of the guys at Polygram and he told me Eric was teaching in Knoxville. He’s great.”
“This is all my creation. I wrote the script. And I’m playing Nancy,” Nobumoto explains. “There are 22 songs, and it’s kind of a parody. It’s about her life, but as a parody. Something cute. And I wear things, like my wig is really, really big. Huge. All of the band was spread out, socially distanced. And they were all fitted in Lansky’s jackets. It’s a Memphis thing.
“It’s all through my nonprofit called The Jazz Masters Series, which is sponsoring the band. Its mission is to honor, educate and preserve the music of jazz. Memphis is now the headquarters of the Jazz Masters Series. It was in L.A.” Nobumoto says to expect more large-scale projects from her nonprofit in the near future, including a tribute to Diana Ross.