Jazz vocalist Giacomo Gates joins local musicians in featured Rome, NY performance

Franca’s Wine Room in Rome has quickly cemented its reputation as the spot in Central New York to hear great jazz, regularly presenting the top local practitioners of the genre and putting on the area’s first jazz festival in recent memory.

Now the venue is upping the ante, bringing in one of the most respected jazz vocalists performing today, Giacomo Gates.

The show, billed as “Giacomo Gates & Friends”, will be held this Saturday, Sept. 24 from 7-10 p.m. The “friends” are a veritable who’s who of local jazz dignitaries, including Rick Montalbano on piano, drummer Jim Johns, bassist Matt Vacanti and Monk Rowe on saxophone. Admission is free.

In addition to being a jazz vocalist of the highest order, Giacomo Gates is a musical storyteller with an engaging stage presence, and one of the foremost singers in the style known as “vocalese,” a jazz vocal style in which the voice emulates an instrumental part. Unlike the better known “scat” singing, vocalese singers use recognizable lyrics that are sung to pre-existing instrumental solos, whereas scat singing generally uses nonsense syllables.

Giacomo’s performances include refreshing versions of classics from the Great American Songbook and seldom heard jazz treasures, combined with expert scatting, swinging vocalese and the occasional inside jazz anecdote.

In addition to being wowed by Gates' vocals, audiences also enjoy the interaction on the bandstand between him and his musicians, the spontaneity, the humor, the stories about the music and composers, along with their relation to everyday life.

To translate great instrumental solos into vocalese, Gates sometimes vocalizes as an instrument — trombone, flute, bass and even drums, not as a gimmick, but rather conceived within the context of the music.

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“In this kind of music, it’s about intention, honesty and what comes through in your voice,” explains Gates, “the Experience of Life.”

Of course, it helps when your life experience is as interesting as his. While many musicians visiting upstate New York in the fall are taken aback by the chilly weather, cold temperatures aren’t likely to faze Gates: for 14 years he worked in a variety of jobs in the Alaskan wilderness, including three years on the Alaska Pipeline, experiences that played a major role in his artistic development.

“Two things always struck me out there,” Giacomo says of that experience, “feeling insignificant and feeling very alive.”Still, shows in the Alaskan tundra are few and far between, and it wasn’t until he was 40 that he was able to showcase his talent when he decided to return to his native Connecticut and devote full attention to his music, wasting no time building a devoted audience with his highly entertaining live shows and his nine critically acclaimed albums.

Franca’s Wine Room is located at 260 West Dominick St., in the Historical Capital Theatre District.

This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: Utica music scene: Jazz vocalist Giacomo Gates to perform in Rome