Svetlana Shmulyian makes Syracuse debut Nov. 10

By Russ Tarby

Contributing Writer

Now a mainstay on the New York City hot jazz scene, Svetlana and her Delancey Five will visit Syracuse to open the CNY Jazz Cabaret Series at 5 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 10 at the Sheraton Syracuse University Ballroom, 801 University Ave. Tickets cost $30 in advance, $35 at the door and $10 for students. Affordable food stations and bar will be available, and parking is free in the Sheraton garage.

Svetlana Shmulyian’s band, named the Delancey Five as an homage to Artie Shaw’s Gramercy Five, focus on classic jazz and swing, its members often include reedman Adrian Cunningham, trumpeter Charlie Caranicas, pianist Dalton Ridenhour, guitarist Vinny Raniolo, bassist George Delancey and drummer Bob Garcia.

The group has headlined sold-out shows in premier venues and festivals internationally, as well as the Big Apple’s Blue Note, B.B. King’s, The Back Room, Yoshi’s, Iridium and Joe’s Pub.

Her tour stop here celebrates her latest recording, “Night at the Movies,” produced by Grammy Award-winner Matt Pierson and featuring trombonist Wycliffe Gordon.

While the band swings mightily, it’s Shmulyian’s voice that gets most of the attention.

“Her delivery is charmingly precise,” noted critics Joe Bebco and Alan Young, writing for The Syncopated Times. “There’s a distinctive Russian erudition and craftsmanship to how she constructs a phrase. While you can tell that she’s immersed herself in Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan, she doesn’t sound much like any of them. Shmulyian’s voice is extraordinarily mutable; she can be misty on one number, and then disarmingly direct and crystalline as she was on her first set-opener, a vividly uneasy swing through ‘But Not For Me.’ She saved her vibrato for the very lowest and highest notes she’d hit all night, with a Powerglide fluidity, and made it look effortless.”

CNY Jazz’s Executive Director Larry Luttinger sees historical significance in Svetlana’s rise to fame here.

“In the depths of the Cold War, what did we send to the Soviets?” Luttinger asked. “Tours by Dave Brubeck, Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie, that’s what! Svetlana now returns this gift in kind, with interest. Her uncanny vocal stylings and unerring sense of swing are as American as Mark Twain, Norman Rockwell and apple pie. She and her band will pay it forward big time when she hits the bandstand.”

A few tunes the audience may hear on Nov. 10 are “Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me,” “Exactly Like You,” “Lady Be Good,” “Sometimes I’m Happy” and “Tea for Two.”

Information about the entire CNY Jazz 2019-2020 Cabaret Series may be found at cnyjazz.org; 315-479-5299.