A Star Is Born: Lena Seikaly's Debut At The Kennedy Center's Millenium Stage

One of the reasons I had not yet attended one of the free Millenium Stage performances at the Kennedy Center is their timing: 6:00pm is too early for the working Washingtonian. To get there in time in the rush hour, I left my job an hour early. I did not regret it. When I arrived, there were already about 50 persons standing in line. I was lucky to grab a seat on the second row from the front.

The evening performer was Lena Seikaly and her quartet. I had already heard Lena's voice a few times at my friend Jane's house in DC. At that time she was performing with The Sanga Equation, a small jazz band created by Jane's son. At that time, she was already bewitching us all with an already warm and mature voice (very mature for a girl in her early 20s), her moving interpretations of famous jazz standards, including a jazzy version of The Sound of Music 's "My Favorite Things."

Tonight Lena performed for the first time at the Kennedy Center free Millenium Stage Concerts. Her voice is now pure velvet, pure sensuality. Her body language when she sings is ecstasy revealed. She is jazz incarnate, or should I say reincarnated? When one listens to her, it seems like if all the Great Ladies of Jazz and Blues are gathered in her voice. Or did they lean over her cradle when she was born, bestowing all their talents on her? Like Billie Holiday or Carmen McRae, Lena Seikaly brings emotion to all her songs. Like Sarah Vaughan, Lena's voice has a multi-octave range: she could have an operatic career if she wanted to. Like Sarah Vaughan again, she can deconstruct a melody without losing touch with the written notes. And like Ella Fitzgerald, she knows scatting, using sounds instead of words, proving the universality of jazz language beyond the barriers of race and country.

More than the voice of a good jazz performer, Lena Seikaly has the "Soul" necessary to sing jazz. She breathes jazz, she speaks jazz.

She has just been chosen as a participant for the 2009 Betty Carter Jazz Ahead Residency at the Kennedy Center, another great lady of jazz, if not the best one according to her peers. And she is releasing her first album, with the appropriate name of "Written in the Stars", which also reveals her talent as a composer.

One day, I am sure, Lena Seikaly's name will be added to the list of star jazz singers who are the measure of jazz singing.