Dee Dee Bridgewater had barely gotten a note out when she realized she and pianist Bill Charlap were not on the same page.
The intro he was playing did not match the song she had started singing.
"It's so much fun what we do because you never know where we're gonna go," she said with a laugh. "Sometimes we don't know where we're gonna go."
Where they went with the soldout HSL Properties Tucson Jazz Festival audience at Fox Tucson Theatre Friday night was a place as close to jazz perfection as you can get short of conjuring the ghosts of Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald.
Dee Dee Bridgewater and Bill Charlap finished one another's musical sentences throughout their concert Friday at Fox Tucson Theatre.ย
The Grammy- and Tony-winning Bridgewater showed off impressive scatting on the pair's reimagination of Duke Ellington's "I'm Beginning to See the Light," with Charlap dancing along the keyboards, matching Bridgewater's scaling scats with remarkable timing and improvisation. When she extended the vocal line with a series of improvised rhythms, he answered with playful bursts that almost dared Bridgewater to keep up.
The pair's approach to the Great American Songbook takes those gemsย โ among them "Love For Sale," "In the Still of the Night," "London Town," "Come Rain or Come Shine"ย โ to a whole different place with flourishes that made each sound familiar but new.
Bridgewater opened "My Funny Valentine" in her powerful near mezzo range before lifting the tempo and scatting through the lush ballad with the Grammy-winning Charlap mirroring her mood.
His muscular performance of Ellington's "Caravan" with its big, bold chord changes intertwined with fluctuating rhythms complemented Bridgewater's pulsating vocals punctuated with scat lines that took your breath away. In a spotlight-stealing moment, Charlap performed aย frenetic and brassy solo with Bridgewater dancing and grooving along.
The dynamic duo of pianist Bill Charlap and vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater opened the closing weekend of the 2026 HSL Properties Tucson Jazz Festival at Fox Tucson Theatre Friday night.ย
Bridgewater and Charlap have been collaborating just a few years, but their chemistry on stage felt like it had been cultivated over a lifetime. They laughed at one another's quiet quips and applauded each other with genuine sincerity that often gets lost in today's entertainment space.ย
During a pause as Charlap got situated, Bridgewater, sitting beside his piano, cackled, "I'll get you my pretty," a not-so-subtle reference to her role as Glinda in the original Broadway cast of "The Wiz." The 75-year-old, who won a Tony for that work, circled back to that milestone in her sublime "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" encore.
Grammy- and Tony-winning vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater displayed her full vocal range, from the highs and the lows to the luscious nuances, in her concert Friday with pianist Bill Charlap.ย
Friday's concert, a coproduction of the Tucson Jazz Festival and the Tucson Desert Song Festival, came on the jazz festival's closing weekend.ย
The Song Festival, meanwhile, continues through April 25, including the world premiere on Wednesday of New York composer and punk rocker Tamara-kali's new song cycle for Karen Slack and the Mirรณ Quartet with Arizona Friends of Chamber Music at Leo Rich Theater; and Tucson Symphony Orchestra's performance of Mozart's Requiem Jan. 31 and Feb. 1 at Catalina Foothills High School.
HSL Properties Tucson Jazz Festival Executive and Artistic Director Kris Dodge sat down with Tucson Desert Song Festival Board President Jeannette Segel to talk about collaborations between the two events including the Jan. 23 concert with Dee Dee Bridgewater and Bill Charlap that they co-presented at Fox Tucson Theatre.
Visit tucsondesertsongfestival.org for more information.
