In what’s billed as “The Summit: The Manhattan Transfer Meets Take 6,” for the first time the two Grammy-winning vocal groups will embark on a major tour together on Oct. 1. To the delight of longtime fans of acapella and vocal jazz fusion, this collaborative tour and what’s almost a vocal supergroup (they’ll perform on stage together during each concert) is a natural progression for the legendary groups, and years in the making.
Despite having just gotten off the plane from road dates in China, Manhattan Transfer’s Janis Siegel generously spent an hour talking about their highly anticipated tour with Take 6, as well as offering more introspective thoughts in the blog series “Beyond the Surface,” pushing through jet lag.
“Yeah, there’s jet lag happening. My secret is just to get right back on whatever time you’re on,” Siegel said, with a laugh.
One of the first times the two vocal groups sang together stateside was at the Catalina Jazz Club on the Sunset Strip. “I think the very first time we sang together was in Europe, on a TV show or concert, and it was really a lot of fun. This is a natural outgrowth of that,” Siegel said. “This is the fruition of those initial shows and the initial attempts to put together a collaborative show.”
The two seasoned groups, keepers of jazz classics and acapella music, have the same manager. “It was a business decision by our manager, but it turned out to be much more,” Siegel said, referring to the inception of this tour. “There’s places where we diverged, they’re an acapella group, we are not. They’re also really rooted in the church and we’re not. But there’s places where we come together in a big way and one is a love of vocal harmony, and Gene Puerling in particular, a vocal arranger - that kind of sensibility.”
Siegel calls Puerling the “dean of vocal arrangers.” He was the vocal arranger and member of the Hi-Lo’s and Singers Unlimited. Manhattan Transfer famously sings Puerling’s arrangement of “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” for which he won a Grammy. “He had a very unique style of hearing harmony and writing it down,” Siegel said. “And both groups are very much into it. We share a love of that.”
Fans will see both groups blend on stage to sing each other’s songs. “It’s taken this long to put together the kind of a show that really works for the both groups. There’s going to be some of each group alone, and then there’s going to be total collaborative stuff where the 10 of us are on stage together. Then we’re going to break it up into smaller groups. There’s a lot of combinations. Cheryl and I are the only women, which is awesome!” Siegel said, laughing. “We have a little section where we sing each other’s tunes, a little bit of a snippet, like Battle of the Bands thing.”
Manhattan Transfer has never done a major tour like this with another group, so this will be a first on another level. “Not in this way, where we’re really doing the show together - all together,” Siegel said. “We’ve done a vocalese show with the New York Voices. Vocalese is a type of jazz singing whereby you lyricise classic instrumental and you sing all the solos and all the parts. It’s what Jon Hendricks and Lambert, Hendricks and Ross did, what Eddie Jefferson did.”
In fact, Siegel will be singing at Hendricks’ 95th birthday. “I’m singing at his tribute next week here in New York,” she said, adding that although he doesn’t perform anymore, he can still chime in vocally. “If you kind of rev up his motor, he will improvise,” she said, with a laugh, “but he’s losing words, which is ironic, since he is a wordsmith.”
With the various permutations of members on stage, The Summit promises to be entertaining for all fans of vocal music. “It’s going to be a whole mixture of things. We’re going to be doing ‘Killer Joe’ together and “Ray’s Rock House” and we’re probably going to be performing a Gene Pearling arrangement together, since we love that. There might be a little ‘Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” Siegel said.
The upcoming tour dates are mostly at performing arts centers, and aims to be a major show with lighting, staging and choreography. Although the dates are mostly in mid-sized markets like Wichita, Nashville, and Annapolis, they will be in the Boston, New York and Los Angeles area. The tour could be a precursor to future tours that hit the heart of major markets like New York City and Los Angeles.
It was because of a recent reunion that made me revisit Manhattan Transfer’s music, scrolling down to my “Very Best of Manhattan Transfer” playlist on the iPod that hadn’t been listened to in years. Hearing the first few bars of “Soul Food to Go” transported me right back to the nosebleed seats at Radio City - I could once again see the group walk out to the front of the stage, bathed in blue light so many years ago. It illustrates the power of music is unlike anything else, and the Transfer’s songs are indelible as part of that soundtrack of our lives. And apparently, the group gets plenty of similar reaction from their four decades of being part of that playlist for their fans.
“We get a lot of feedback on that, and it’s very fulfilling to know that you’ve been part of people’s lives in this deep and meaningful way. It’s very, very thrilling to hear it,” Siegel said.
While the Transfer brings alive another era with classics like “Route 66,” or “Birdland,” to us in the modern day, they don’t adhere to any one kind of music when it comes to song choices on their albums.
“It depends what record we’re doing and what we’re listening at the time and what’s inspiring to us,” Siegel said. “We never really locked ourselves into one style of music. There was always this stupid jazz controversy – are we a jazz group, are we a pop group? But we’re just vocal harmony nuts that are exploring basically American music, although we did make that foray into Brazilian music. It really was through the eyes of pop music. We chose our artists in Brazil that were influenced by American pop like Djavan, the guy who wrote ‘Soul Food to Go’ which is called Sina in the original Portuguese.”
In the blog series “Beyond the Surface,” the conversation continues, as Janis delves into topics like meditation, the spirituality of voice rest, a life path that was almost in medicine or the sciences, what helped her get through Tim Hauser’s passing, and time.
