DATE: Friday, June 23
TIME: 7:30 P.M.
TICKETS: $25 (with free post-show wine get together)

Fay Victor, voice; Michaël Attias, alto and baritone saxophones; Anthony Coleman, piano; Ratzo Harris, double-bass; Devin Gray, drums

Fay Victor’s hard-swinging Herbie Nichols Sung ensemble returns to help celebrate the fifth-anniversary month of the Sound It Out series – with ticket proceeds going to help fund Greenwich House Music School, whose wonderful hospitality makes Sound It Out possible. Fay will lead an all-star band in her vocal re-creations of music by the great, unsung bop-era pianist-composer Herbie Nichols, who penned the music for Billie Holiday’s “Lady Sings the Blues.” He once said: “The voice is the most beautiful instrument of all.”

About this project, Fay says: “I’ve been working with Herbie Nichols’ music for well over a decade – I’m madly in love with it. His is joyous, irresistible music, even if it has been sadly underplayed. There are scholarly approaches to his pieces, but our way is to open up the forms and really get that joyousness across. Except for Billie’s words to ‘Lady Sings the Blues,’ I wrote the lyrics to all the tunes, with the words coming out of the music itself and my response to it. The way the band plays is sensitive and open but with a real muscularity and intensity. I hope people aren’t intimidated if they don’t know the music or even the name of Herbie Nichols – I want them to come dig the music and leave having been taken by the beauty of the melodies and their singability. I want people to fall in love with Herbie Nichols like I have.”