Norwegian jazz singer Radka Toneff (1952-1982) has the sometimes disconcerting gift of singing sincerely. I know it is difficult to quantify the sincerity of an interpreter: yet when Toneff opens his mouth at the beginning of The moon is a harsh mistressthe piece by Jimmy Webb that opens what would have been his latest album, Fairytales, you know she is telling the truth. Toneff doesn’t bluff, he doesn’t act; that song, in that moment fixed forever in the recording studio, is as vital to her as her breath.
“See her how she flies” is the first line that breaks the silence after the needle touches the vinyl. The voice of the singer is small, friendly and seems to confide: she expresses the fragility of those who, speaking with a friend, lowers all defense. The diction is immaculate and the sense of time is impeccable, and even when the voice acquires volume and clarity and flies towards the refrain, there is no trace of technicality but only of a superfine technique that never dominates the natural musicality of the song.
Radka Toneff was born in Oslo, Norway in 1952. Her father was a Bulgarian folk singer and pilot. The basis from which she starts as a singer is precisely the Levantine tradition, full of vocal virtuosity, of Bulgarian folk songs. A tradition that she immediately inserts into jazz, pop and rock, creating a personal and elusive style, made even more unique by her eclectic repertoire choices: the great songbook American but also songwriters such as Joni Mitchell, Chaka Khan, Patti Austin and Phoebe Snow.
Notice to lovers
The choice to open Fairytaleshis third and last album, with a classic but all in all side like song The moon is a harsh mistress by Jimmy Webb, is indicative of his way of managing the repertoire. The song borrows the title of a 1966 science fiction novel, The moon is a severe teacher by Robert A. Heinlein, and it is a warning to lovers: as the Moon is so beautiful and golden in the sky, so close that you can touch it, so love can deceive and make us find ourselves alone and cold “under a sky made of stone “.
Toneff expands the song, does not fear its metaphors (the moon is “a ghost rose between the mountains and the tops of the pines”) on the contrary, he makes them his own and dresses them with a wonderful sense of magical realism. With sophisticated delicacy it suggests a kind of contiguity between the standard and theOde alla luna from the Undine, an imaginative and fabulous opera by the Bohemian composer Antonín Dvořák. Fundamental here is the work of the American pianist and arranger Steve Dobrogosz who signs the record together with the singer.
It is clear that the songs must mean something to Radka Toneff, otherwise she would not sing them; it is not enough that they are beautiful or well known to the public. It is precisely her passion for her lyrics that leads her to such heterogeneous and apparently capricious choices. The piece by Jimmy Webb is followed by one by Elton John and Bernard Taupin, Come down in timewhich seems to re-propose the suspended atmospheres of The moon is a harsh mistresswith its appeal to uncertainty and the deceptive nature of love.
Con Lost in the stars by Kurt Weill, Radka Toneff shows what she is capable of doing with standards: her honesty allows her to handle a well-known piece of the late 1940s with absolute freedom. The same happens with the other two classics of the collection: My funny Valentine at Rodgers & Hart e Nature boy by Eden Ahbez. “I do everything wrong,” Toneff once said explaining his style, “and that’s how I like it.” In Fairytales there are also several unreleased pieces among which it stands out I read my sentence, set to music by Steve Dobrogosz on verses by Emily Dickinson. Toneff’s voice is very tender and seems to sing a lullaby when she says that she reads her death sentence carefully to familiarize herself with her fate: so that she and death, after they met, “could meet quietly, as friends . Say goodbye, and leave, without a nod. And at that point, she closed the matter ”.
And the matter unfortunately ended there: Toneff was found dead on October 21, 1982 in a forest outside Oslo, killed by an overdose of drugs. Fairytales it would become a legendary album for Scandinavian jazz, and Radka Toneff’s idiosyncratic and highly personal style, straddling jazz and pop, would influence at least two generations of singers.
Radka Toneff is Steve Dobrogosz
Fairytales
Odin Records, 1982