Cover Dianne Reeves, who will return to Hong Kong this month (Photo: courtesy of Dianne Reeves)
Dianne Reeves, who will return to Hong Kong this month (Photo: courtesy of Dianne Reeves)
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Jazz queen Dianne Reeves, who is returning to Hong Kong this month, says she is hopeful about the next generation of musicians.
Life was very different when Dianne Reeves first came to Asia, in 1981. Then aged 25 and just getting started in her career, the American was part of the new generation of 1980s female jazz musicians—alongside Anita Baker, Dee Dee Bridgewater and Cassandra Wilson—staking their claim in what had long been a male-dominated industry. She had come as part of Brazilian musician Sérgio Mendes’s world tour, which stopped in Hong Kong, Singapore and Manila, among other cities, her impressive range, control and expressive depth flagged her as one to watch, both home at abroad. Her Hong Kong performance that year was a sensation. After her next concert in the city, in 2005 in Sha Tin Town Hall, she and her band left the stage to a standing ovation.
Now 69, with five Grammy Awards to her name, she is a globally recgonised legend. This month, she will return to the city for the third time as part of her Asia tour, which also includes Guangzhou, Singapore and Tokyo. Speaking to Tatler by video call three weeks before her November performance at Hong Kong’s Xiqu Centre, which is presented by WestK Performing Arts in partnership with Rolex, she said she was most excited about “the fact that I’m invited to come back. I really enjoyed the last time I was in Hong Kong. Every time, the audiences were so open and warm.”
Above Dianne Reeves (Photo: courtesy of Dianne Reeves and Jerris Madison)
Dianne Reeves (Photo: courtesy of Dianne Reeves and Jerris Madison)
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Given the vast changes in Hong Kong in the four decades since her first visit, she was eager to experience the city and meet its people in a new light, saying, “I’m looking forward to coming because I am inspired [for my performances] by the moments that I experience at the time,” she says. “It is those things that will make what I have to say authentic. Even if we do some of the same songs, they’re never done in the same way every night. So I can’t wait to get there, experience Hong Kong and tell the Hong Kong people what it is that I have to say.”
Touring is an important part of her art, as she believes meeting people from different cultures has an influence on her music. “I don’t know [what the influence is] until it happens. I view jazz as a living art form. It’s a conversation,” she says. “When I’m in front of the audience and starting my conversation with the things that I do authentically [with them], there are certain things that might happen, such as [cultural] nuances. Some audiences are more attuned to those nuances than an audience from another place. I love learning and finding out what the interest and igniting point in my audience are.
“Performing is medicine, and it’s always very healing,” she continues. “That’s the greatest thing about being out on the road—you get there and you meet some people you never knew before, and you [form] a relationship with them. It’s wonderful.”
Above Dianne Reeves (Photo: courtesy of Dianne Reeves and Jerris Madison)
Dianne Reeves (Photo: courtesy of Dianne Reeves and Jerris Madison)
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Reeves’s music is almost universally accessible, due in no small part to her natural ability to switch between and blend genres. She comes a musical family—her father was a singer; her mother a trumpeter, her uncle was bassist Charles Burrell, the first Black member of a major American symphony orchestra, and her cousin was keyboardist, composer, singer-songwriter and record producer George Duke—so grew up listening to a wide variety of styles. She was also mentored by a number of greats, including jazz singer Phil Moore, calypso singer Harry Belafonte and Mendes, among others. Her music now blends all that.
What’s more, she doesn’t see believe in separating these various sounds. “They’re all music of the same tree which shares the same roots,” she says. “People don’t realise … Sarah Vaughn came out of the church and Ella Fitzgerald listened to the popular music of her time. It’s all one thing. So it’s not really separate for me [either].” She likes to think of her music as “very globally accessible from a rhythmic, melodic standpoint” so that she can create a human connection with and among her audiences. “While I’m up there with my band, the other part of the band is the audience, and we want them to feel included,” she says.
When she first started performing publicly, the media was quick to compare her to Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. But she sees the greatest lesson she learnt from her predecessors was to “find my own voice. You start off walking in the shoes of those who’ve come before you, but then, you would be doing yourself a disservice if you didn’t find your own shoes. I learnt very early that they could all sing the same song and the song would be uniquely different. I could never be them. I can only be me, and nobody can ever be me, so I don’t try to sound like them or be like them, but I am inspired by the courage and the way that they have shown me how to be myself.”
Critical success has come in the form of those five Grammys, four of them for best jazz vocal album; of being the first singer ever to perform at the famed Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles; and in her work with companies such as the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic and Los Angeles Philharmonic. She has sung with icons such as Wynton Marsalis, performed for former US President Barack Obama on multiple occasions, including at the State Dinner for the President of China in 2011 and the 2016 International Jazz Day Global Concert, and for Nelson Mandela in 2003 as part of the 46664 South African Aids benefit concert.
Today, she is delighted to see how the next generation of jazz artists is experimenting with and seeking their own sounds and messages. “It’s extraordinary what’s happening. There are some wonderful, extraordinary young jazz singers out there who are just amazing. None of them sounds like each other. They’re all different, and they’re all brilliant,” she says. “I love this because that means that the music is evolving. A lot of young teachers have been a part of this process of developing their own voices. This is really exciting to see, because they recognise that art belongs to everyone.”
She’s also pleased to see better female representation in the industry than when she started. “[Now,] there are more women who are pursuing so many things in the music industry, specifically in jazz,” she says. “It’s a full and rich experience to see all the great, amazing instrumentalists, composers and arrangers. I didn’t see that coming up like that. They were there, but not in the amount that they are today. So that’s exciting.
“Art is the thing that is the most important in the movement and the shaping of people. Most jazz musicians always have something to say about the conditions and what it is that we’re living in,” she says. Jazz has long served as a medium to discuss social issues, from Duke Ellington’s 1941 all-black musical revue Jump for Joy that challenges the racist stereotypes of African Americans in American theatre and film to Max Roach’s 1960 album We Insist! which addressed the Civil Rights Movement and the African independence movements and Nina Simone’s explorations of Black identity and pride. Reeves is pleased to see how fellow artists today are continuing this vital tradition—her current favourite album is drummer Terri Lyne Carrington’s new album We Insist 2025! featuring Christie Dashiell, which pays tribute to Roach’s album and highlights Carrington’s mission to champion jazz and advocate for inclusivity and raise the voices of women, and trans and non-binary people.
Reeves also continues to evolve and develop her own sound. She expects to release two albums next year: one with a long-time collaborator, Brazilian jazz guitarist Romero Lubambo; the other is a celebration of the centenary of influential jazz figure John Coltrane’s birth with American saxophonist and composer Branford Marsalis.
“Art is something that you can define, refine, grasp and master in your own way,” she says. “My journey—the things that I’ve experienced, seen and learnt—has become my story. And sometimes it’s not just telling a story, but it is singing a story, and the subtext of the words that you’re singing is what allows you to sing the song.”
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Zabrina is the Senior Editor, Arts and Culture of Tatler Hong Kong. She specialises in performing arts, visual art and film. Her wanderlust was first fuelled by the Mighty Rovers Antarctica Expedition 2010. Over the years, she has interviewed A-list artists and filmmakers, including Oscar winners Chlóe Zhao and Tim Yip, Golden Horse winner Sylvia Chang, In the Mood for Love cinematographer Christopher Doyle, Pachinko author Min Jin Lee, and Coachella’s first Chinese solo singer Jackson Wang. She won gold at the WAN-IFRA Asian Media Awards for her 2021 feature on the waves of hate crimes targeting Asian Americans.
