NEW YORK—The wonderful jazz and blues singer Catherine Russell brought her quartet to Zankel Hall for her Carnegie Hall debut. The show bore the title of her latest Grammy-nominated album, “Harlem on my Mind.” In her words, what she is singing is the Great African-American Songbook, mostly written between 1918 and the late 1950s.
Before each song, Russell explained the source and significance of the pieces, pointing out the legendary (or in some cases unfairly overlooked) vocalists whose recordings impressed her as well as the songwriters.
