At 42nd and Wilshire: Rachael & Vilray’s Cool Cali Jazz Celebration of Stagey NYC Musicals, Courtesy West of Broadway

From performing their new song “Off Broadway” with guest partner Stephen Colbert on The Late Show to getting the keys to the verdant, limited-access Gramercy Park, Rachael & Vilray seem to be having a strictly New York experience as of late. 

Their new album on Concord Jazz, West of Broadway, is a sophisti-sonic, lit-witty librettist’s affair that even closes with a bittersweet love song to the sour Big Apple in “Manhattan Serenade.”

Whether it’s the conversational chatter of “Is It Jim?” with its mix of magical realism and Greek mythology, or the glad-to-be-unhappy showiness of “Love Comes Around,” their jazzy verse-trading and Five-Borough banter could make Guys & Dolls’ Nicely-Nicely Johnson and Sky Masterson green with envy.

And yet, from the subtone wooziness of saxophonist Steve Wilson mingling with the twilight twinkle of vibraphone, xylophone and piano coming from Warren Wolf (both from Christian McBride’s Inside Straight band), to the cosmopolitan esprit de corps of its melodies, West of Broadway sounds closer to the West Coast cool jazz classicism of Gerry Mulligan, Chico Hamilton, Gary McFarland and Chet Baker than it does, say, Gershwin, Rodgers or Hart.

How did Nicaraguan-Brooklyn native Vilray Bolles and Perth, Australian–born Rachael Price (of the snazzily uncategorizable quartet Lake Street Dive) get to this charming LA-to-NYC intersection?

A Sondheim Epiphany
Bolles makes a surprising admission. “I didn’t really start getting into musicals until a year-and-a-half ago,” he says.

The two discussed their continental divide, and having parents whose love for classic musical theater of the Great White Way had an impact on young Vilray and Rachael both (“Carousel, Oklahoma, My Fair Lady, a lot, and the Hollywood musicals of the 1940s, great songs, loose plot, like Tea for Two”). What brought Bolles quickly into obsession was one of the form’s most complex and innovative works: Stephen Sondheim and George Firth’s frank tale of romance, fidelity and loneliness, Company.

“Full stop, Company has been my favorite musical since age 16 when I watched my sister do it when she attended Northwestern,” says Price.

“When Rachael played Company for me, I was amazed and realized that not knowing this was a gaping hole in my education,” admits Vilray. “I mean, I also watched My Fair Lady and Singing in the Rain, and knew that the standards sung by great jazz singers were from classic Broadway musicals. Company, though, is incredibly modern, chancey and original.”

The City as Protagonist
Unlike jazz or pop vocal duos that rely on lead-harmony dynamics, Rachael & Vilray are all about making interpersonal chatter. What could be finer than sonorously trading verses as if guided by a libretto, or the conducted lyrics in a musical’s storyline, in order to tell the tales of West of Broadway.

New York is a principal protagonist in the drama through West of Broadway on songs such as “My Key to Gramercy Park,” “Off Broadway” and the Harold Adamson/Louis Alter composition “Manhattan Serenade.” In jest I note how New York has become the third member of the duo.

“I can even tell you what neighborhoods in New York these characters come from,” says Price, “based on the narratives we’ve created.” 

“There are songs such as ‘Treat Me Better’ [from Rachael & Vilray, 2019] that touch on the format of the classic musical theater song,” notes Bolles. “On this album, I wrote more songs where the characters speak to each other or another character. ‘Love Comes Around’ and ‘Forever Never Lasts’ do that, even if they’re singing into the universe. That’s the big difference [in my writing] now, having listened to more musical theater stuff after Company.”

Price adds that the album has furthered her pursuit of singing more theatrically. “With each of our records, I’ve been figuring out how to deliver lyrics in a way that tells the story, illuminates the joke, relays the mood of the character — which is significantly different from what I do in other contexts.”

Listening to legendary actress, vocalist and Company centerpiece Elaine Strich helped Rachael make the great turnaround from intimacy and nuance into more theatricalized vocal vibes and techniques. “Stritch was the missing piece to my education as she came up with the same style as jazz vocalists who have been inspirational to me such as Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee, but went in the direction of acting with her voice,” says Price, citing Lee’s 1960 showtunes record Latin ala Lee! and Blossom Dearie’s occasional reach into the Broadway songbook.

“Once I realize that I can learn a lot from Elaine Stritch, everything starts to change for me,” she says. “Still, it’s a balance. This is me making a record with orchestration and a band so I have to also be musical in another context. I’m not just playing a character.” Bolles adds: “You could write a song to perform on the New York stage six times a week, or you could write a song for singing in the clubs,” he says. “With that in mind, what should it be?”

Talking of the East and West Coast jazz influence and sun-dappled, yet noirish tone of West of Broadway, Bolles continues: “I love the way the vibraphone sounds. I love how the bari sax imbues an orchestration, if you write it right, with that mystery, darkness and modernity. On one hand, I’m telling Rachael this is a song where so-and-so says such-and-such, but then telling my arranger something about the lost Birth of the Cool charts. Let’s interpret it that way.” JT