Above pic Hetty Kate… Photo credit Nikol Obrova
Hearing Hetty Kate at her last performance at The Lounge in December, 2024 was a revelation. Her then immaculate performance had me looking forward with great anticipation to her return to the same venue on November 13 recently. She was once again accompanied by a stellar group of local musicians: Matt McMahon (piano), Karl Dunnicliff (double bass), Ben Hauptmann (guitar), and Hamish Stuart (drums). They were all given generous solo space, thus bringing off an authentic jazz experience, rather than a one-dimensional display of vocals, with the musicians in subordinate roles. Improvisations from some of the country’s finest jazz musicians were essential to the success of this concert.
The content of this performance was substantially different to Hetty Kate’s 2024 program. It was largely built around Kate’s interesting new project, which I gather is entitled Jazz in Four Seasons. This is a four-album odyssey dedicated to the seasons in a calendar year which Kate apparently intends to record in different continents. The first album is dedicated to Spring, which she describes as “the most hopeful and capricious of seasons.” It has already been recorded in Prague with carefully selected Czech musicians.
Accordingly, the repertoire throughout the evening was in many ways dominated by songs related to spring. It began with Soon It’s Gonna Rain, a song from the musical comedy The Fantasticks, followed by Billy Strayhorn’s lovely composition A Flower is a Lovesome Thing.
Then, a pleasant surprise to warm the heart of a jazz nerd: Kate revealed that her favourite composer is the African American jazz pianist Tadd Dameron, widely regarded as the most influential arranger of the bebop era. That a jazz singer of Kate’s ilk should have this unusual opinion is a measure of her sophistication, as Dameron is an acquired taste, little-known to the general public. Having laid down the gauntlet, Kate then presented Dameron’s vibrant waltz Lady Bird, which apparently was written as long ago as 1936.
Kate then presented Bein’ Green (also known as It’s Not Easy Bein’ Green), a song written by Joe Raposo, and originally performed by Jim Henson and his puppet creation Kermit the Frog. The fact that Kate was wearing a rather startling full-length green dress was particularly poignant here, apparently unintentional on her part, simply a coincidence.
As she showed previously Kate was in the practice of providing interesting back stories to the songs or composers being presented. In my view this brings a cabaret performance to life by drawing the audience in to essential history behind the music. In this spirit Kate drew attention to the little-known Bernice Petkere, the composer of the next tune on the program Lullaby of the Leaves. This was first performed in 1932, a jazz standard considered to be the most successful work of Petkere’s composing career. Kate also mentioned that Petkere wrote in 1933 the standard Close Your Eyes, well-known to all jazz musicians.
In more familiar jazz territory Kate closed her first set with I Like The Sunrise, the only vocal in Duke Ellington’s famous Liberian Suite, recorded on Columbia in 1947. Interestingly this was Ellington’s first international commission, from the government of the West African nation Liberia, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of its founding by freed American slaves in 1847.
Kate’s second set continued with largely unfamiliar tunes, commencing with pianist Dave Brubeck’s composition Strange Meadow Lark, which first appeared on his famous 1959 album Time Out. That instrumental version includes what I consider one of alto saxophonist Paul Desmond’s most memorable solos; thanks to Kate’s informative patter I now know that lyrics, which were sung beautifully by Kate, were added to the melody in later years by the pianist’s wife Iola Brubeck.
Not long into this set, Kate revisited Tadd Dameron’s oeuvre with his 1956 composition On a Misty Night, followed up by one of her signature tunes Moonlight in Vermont, reminding us that this is one of the songs in the Great American Songbook with unusual lyrics that don’t rhyme. On this occasion Kate felt the need to do this tune accompanied by only Hauptmann on guitar, which not only brought down the temperature in Kate’s program but also resulted in an exceedingly intimate version of a great song.
This was followed by Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most, another tune featured in the forthcoming Spring album. Written in 1955 this is perhaps the best-known of songs with lyrics by Fran Landesman and music by Tommy Wolf. Wikipedia tells us that the lyrics are inspired by T S Eliot’s famous poem The Wasteland.
As Kate and her backing band embarked on their final numbers, heading towards an inevitable standing ovation, I was struck by the thought that Kate was perhaps the best example of a jazz vocalist I’d heard for some time who was so in love with the great songs she had chosen to present. On more than one occasion she used the term “delicious” to describe a song. I have no doubt this sentiment is genuine, as her delight in serving up her favourite songs is palpable.
Interestingly, Kate’s version of Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most adopted a gentle funk-style, eight feel, which was rather unusual, as this tune has usually been treated as a ballad in slow four. Kate’s last tune, her encore, was It Might As Well be Spring, from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein film State Fair; it won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in that year. It was taken at a very bright clip, and at the time I didn’t notice its unusual time signature; I’m grateful that I now know it was in 7/4. These departures from the conventional in jazz did not prevent the audience of some 200 jazz enthusiasts from warmly celebrating once again an excellent performance from one of this country’s finest female jazz artists.
This concert took place at The Lounge in Chatswood on Thursday, November 13, 2025, courtesy of support from the Willoughby City Council. It featured Hetty Kate (vocals), Matt McMahon (piano), Karl Dunnicliff (double bass), Ben Hauptmann (guitar), and Hamish Stuart (drums).
