JAZZ REVIEW : An Evening With Cleo Laine at the Hollywood Bowl

Spending an evening with Cleo Laine and John Dankworth, even outdoors at the Hollywood Bowl, is not unlike sitting by the fireside, admiring its beauty and being warmed by its glow.

“Come In From the Rain,” Laine sang, and that was the feeling you had as she told the graceful story of this song by Melissa Manchester and Carole Bayer Sager.

Stunning in a gown of brilliant colors, she zeroed in on her main target: songs by women composers. From “I Love You Truly,” written in 1910 by Carrie Jacobs Bond (and fitting with a boppish waltz counter-melody by Dankworth), she sailed through the decades to “My Favorite Year,” a haunting song by two Los Angeles writers, Karen Gottlieb and Michele Brourman. She even brought her own transatlantic blues touch to Billie Holiday’s “Fine and Mellow.”

Laine’s unique and ever-amazing voice ranges from low and sultry to treetop high, with Dankworth as her constant companion: playing alto saxophone in unison or counterpoint to her wordless passages (she has given the art of scat singing a different dimension), embellishing each song with his discreet voicings.

Through it all Laine retains her British essence; somehow it doesn’t matter that “we lived our little drahma “ doesn’t quite rhyme with “Stars Fell on Alabama.” And after all these years, she is still taking a chahnce on love.

The opening medleys in each half of her show, using songs with “star” in the title and then “feeling” tunes, seemed a little arbitrary. The collective that came off best was a group of Stephen Sondheim works, including, of course, one from “Into the Woods,” which was her big hit show in Los Angeles earlier this year.

The Dankworth combo opened the two halves with pleasant instrumentals, but it was the charts for his wife, using soprano sax and flute or tenor sax and alto, with fine guitar work by Larry Koonse and piano by Larry Dunlap, that brought out the sextet’s value.

It is doubtful that any other husband-and-wife musical team has ever dovetailed with as much instant empathy as this mutual mind-reading couple. Good vibes radiated everywhere during this thoroughly musical evening, and not just on stage but also among the 9,444 witnesses.