Nikki Yanofsky at the 2008 Montreal Jazz Festival

I went along with a good friend to the Nice Jazz Festival last night and heard an enchanting new voice from Canada,  that of 16 year old Nikki Yanofsky.     I thought: how much experience can you really have to sing jazz when you have only been on the planet for 16 years.    Well, it turns out that you can pick your songs carefully and come up with an up-beat, innocent selection which in this case served Nikki very well indeed.  Without the program to refer to , I remember she did "A Train",  "God Bless the child"," Over the Rainbow", "Old MacDonald had a Farm" among others.

  This is another great Canadian to watch, from a legacy of a couple of my favorites: Diana Krall before she went too sentimental and commercial and of course the original and multi talented Joni Mitchell.

Yanofsky has not an ounce of Krall's "froideur" on stage,   she is as bouncy and welcoming as you could wish.   When she opens her mouth to speak she is all kid.  It is amazing that the songs have such resonance when you hear that little speaking voice. And surprising for me, she doesn't just copy but she interprets.   Her scat singing is some of the best I have ever heard.

   Talking to her afterwards, I asked if she was from a musical jazz family because unlike the clip above from the Montreal Festival, she only did jazz standards for us in Nice and one of her tunes thrown in.... all from the new album to be released in Sept.    " No", she said, " I taught my family about jazz. By the way, for my readers in SF,  she's off to the Napa Valley next.

 From where she gets her chops, the gods only know but  I will definitely be following her career.  I can only think she will blossom into a full fledged star and one day she will put some juice behind some torch songs.  I'm bettin' on it.