Ledisi in Amsterdam

Grammy award-winning soul and jazz singer and songwriter Ledisi is currently on the second leg of her European tour and stopped in Amsterdam on Friday night. The Q Factory, located in the bubbling, lively, but less-touristy Oosterpark region in the Eastern part of the city, is one of Europe’s biggest music complexes with music studios, two concert halls, the Conservatorium of Amsterdam, Amsterdam’s #1 DJ School, the Ballet Orchestra, and more. This year, Ledisi released two albums; the r&b and soul goodie “The Crown”, and the Dinah Washington tribute “For Dinah”. But she started off with “Keep U In Mind”, a track from her 2024 album “Good Life”. Now with way over a dozen albums in her repertoire, it was something like an overview of her career, singing songs from as early as 2007 (“Alright” from “Lost & Found”).

She was already five songs into her set, including two really strong performances of “High” and “Add To You” from her 2017 “Let Love Rule” album before she introduced songs from “The Crown”. Her extremely powerful voice, with her ability to soar to highest highs without ever losing ground and also working the lower registers, was gracing pieces like the dreamy and sweet “Love You Too”, “7 Days Of Weak”, and the wonderfully swinging and swaying, breezy “Daydreaming” (complete with audience participation for “what a dream it was”). She then also went into tribute mode with songs from both her Dinah and her Nina Simone albums. I especially liked her version of “You Go To My Head”, accompanied only by guitar, where she really excelled with her jazz chops. But I’m not so convinced with “Wild Is The Wind”, not because her performance was not good enough, but rather because nobody did this song better than Shirley Horn and I always subconsciously start to compare. Never mind. We were treated to some more blissful soul moments with “Anything For You”, the song that brought her the Grammy, “Love Never Changes” from her “Turn Me Loose” album (2009), and the rousing, heart-warming “Pieces Of Me”, all adding up to the fact that she really belongs to the upper echelon of soul and jazz vocalists, despite some sound issues (keys and background vocalist were hardly audible depending on where you were standing). Now please treat us with a vinyl version of “The Crown”!

Ledisi concludes her European tour this week before she celebrates the fifth anniversary of her “The Wild Card” album at New York’s Blue Note.

10/19 Stockholm – Jazz Festival
10/21 Skellefteå – Sara Kulturhus (Ledisi sings Nina)
10/23 Oslo – Cosmopolite Scene
10/24 Malmö – Victoriateatern
10/25 Zagreb – Kino SC
10/29 New York – Blue Note
10/30 New York – Blue Note
11/09 Dallas – Majestic Theatre
11/11 Denver – Paramount Theatre
11/13 Omaha – Steelhouse
11/14 Prior Lake – Mystic Showroom
11/15 Rockford – Hard Rock Casino