Jazzfest Bonn 2025 at Collegium Leoninum
Singer and pianist Olivia Trummer was on the bill last night at Bonn’s Collegium Leoninum. It was 10 years ago at Berlin’s XJazz Festival when I last saw her perform. She is now about to release her new album “Like Water” on June 6th. Produced by the legendary Russ Titelman, expect a review right here on these pages in the next couple of weeks. Olivia started out her 60-minute set with Stevie Wonder’s “You Are The Sunshine Of My Life” which is also on the album. She’s always putting some new voicings and styles into her interpretations of cover versions and she’s also juxtaposing pop classics with classical pieces from Bach or Beethoven, like the final few chords on the standard “I’m Glad There Is You” for example where she included Bach’s Prelude D Major.
Olivia has a wonderful diction and pitch, with her voice being very clear and almost angel-like in the higher registers, even though it didn’t always come to the fore in the churches’ high ceilings. And she is a brilliant songwriter too. On the beautiful “Strange Day” for example, she sings about “What a strange day it’d be/If there was no tomorrow/If there was only one day left/To understand that what we own/and what we know/and what we’ve planned/is built on sand”. No wonder that Russ Titelman, who is now 80, wanted to work with her after seeing her on a Youtube video. (Russ has worked with James Taylor, Rickie Lee Jones, Randy Newman, Bill LaBounty, Chaka Khan, Christine McVie, David Sanborn, George Benson, Patti Austin, and so many more.) She also put some simple, yet beautiful words to her own “Watching The Moon”.
There was also a very dreamlike and poignant version of “Fragile” and a deeply soulful “Get Here”, the Brenda Russell song which is also associated with Oleta Adams (no comparisons here please). Olivia has this very special, vulnerable and passionate voice which easily wins you over. And so she ended with another unique interpretation of a cult classic: on “My Baby Just Cares For Me”, she used another Beethoven piece as sort of an intro to Nina Simone’s tried and tested standard.
