Lauren Hooker Jazzes Up Sunday Brunch

If you had to be indoors on a picture-perfect afternoon like the one mother nature treated us to this Labor Day Sunday, the place to be was listening to pitch-perfect Lauren Hooker during Hibiscus Restaurant's Sunday Jazz Brunch. 

The restaurant has been serving up its traditional American and authentic Caribbean cusine fare for nearly three years. The jazz brunch was started two months ago by owner and Jamaican transplant Karleen Brandon to fill a void in the local music scene for a jazz venue that catered particularly to an older, more sophisticated set. Bringing in celebrated jazz musicians like Lauren Hooker to play on the cosy room's New Jersey Jazz Society-donated grand piano, Brandon is well on her way to fulfilling her restaurant's mission. 

For the brunch crowd, Hooker played storyteller and musician with a solo act singing and playing piano on standards, originals, and instrumental classics reprised with her own original lyrics. She opened the show with a retelling of how seeing Mal Waldron at the smoke-filled Village Vanguard in the '80s led to her recording with the former Billy Holiday pianist on his "Seagulls of Kristiansund." She explains how her childhood experience growing up on sailboats for months at a time informed the original lyrics she set to his instrumental composition. The song appears on her 2007 debut album Right Where I Belong which she made available for sale at the event. 

Along with their scrambled eggs and jerk chicken, guests were treated to original cuts off Hooker's upcoming CD Life of the Music including the bouncy, up-tempo shuffle blues number "Countin' on the Blues" and the ballad "I Am Doing Very Well," a love song rife with longing and heartache. She demonstrated her impressive talent for scat singing on "Love Me or Leave Me" -- which is filled out with bass, drums, and saxophone on the new album. Life of the Music will be released by Miles High Records on November 16. 

During her multi-set performance, Hooker also revived Shirley Horn's "Here's To Life," a song Hooker plays live often and "At Last" by Etta James which Hooker claimed "was good enough for our president and his wife when he was sworn in, so it's good enough for me." 

Self-described Lauren Hoooker "groupies" like Micki Shilan, Helene Marshall, Thelma Springer, and Bernice Bernstein were "virgins to the jazz brunch," drawn to Hibiscus on Sunday for the entertainment. Shilan, a 76-year-old professional comedian called the "varicose vixen" and winner of New Jersey's 1998 Funniest Female contest (amateur category) regaled the brunch crowd when she rumba-fied Hooker's "Night And Day" with accompaniment on shakers -- percussion instrument and hips. When the duo finished the number, Shilan quipped, "Cole Porter is rolling over in his grave."

A Teaneck resident for the last two decades, Hooker is among good company in the bedroom community's historied hotbed of jazz. Having been home to some of the genre's most iconic figures like Thelonious Monk, Milt Jackson, and J. J. Johnson, Teaneck has attracted musicians for over half a century. According to Hooker, artists have flocked to the community for its cultural diversity and close proximity to Manhattan. Two years ago, dozens of local jazz artists, including Hooker, assembled to recreate Art Kane's famous 1958 photo A Great Day In Harlem with local photographer Bud Glick's rendering called "A Great Night In Teaneck."

If you missed Hooker at Hibiscus, you can catch her next gig on Sept. 18 at New Milford's Garden Cafe, where she'll perform stand-up vocals with back-up from her band, lead by master bassist Rufus Reid. If you want to wait to see her in town, your next opportunity will be the following evening at Madre's Cuban Cuisine on Cedar Lane. 

A complete list of Hooker's upcoming gigs can be found at Lauren Hooker Jazz on MySpace.