Chuck Bergeron began playing jazz bass as a high school senior in his native New Orleans. In nearly half a century since then, he’s been privileged to perform with a host of great vocalists. But he almost always did so as part of a big band or other group. Yet he longed to play one-on-one with singers, to create an intimate musical-emotional bond in a song.
This summer Bergeron, a professor in the Studio Music and Jazz program at the Frost School of Music since 2000, finally fulfilled that dream with the release of “Bass & Face,” an album of duets with ten jazz vocalists. They include such well-known artists as Sheila Brown, Kevin Mahogany, and Janis Siegel, as well as fellow Frost School faculty members Kate Reid, director of the Jazz Vocal program, and Nicole Yarling, a veteran of the South Florida jazz scene.
“Pianists and guitarists get to do this all the time,” said Bergeron. “I love great singers. I’ve been very lucky that I’ve gotten to play with some incredible vocalists. One day I said to myself, “I’m going to do something selfish and not share them with my big band.”
“Bass and voice is very intimate. I’ve led [The South Florida Jazz Orchestra] in Miami for over 20 years. This is the opposite of that in terms of the connection, the communication, the intimacy between two people.”
The album’s quirky title comes from Seattle singer Kendra Shank, whom Bergeron worked with briefly and always included what she called a “bass and face” number in her set.
The recording, on Summit Records, has been widely praised. “An album built… on trust, intimacy and musical honesty,” jazz critic Thierry De Clemensat wrote in Paris Move. “The result is not merely successful—it is quietly astonishing.” “Shines a bright light on Chuck Bergeron’s exceptional talents as a bass master, both soloist and accompanist,” Dee Dee McNeil wrote in her blog Musical Memoirs. An interview with Bergeron will appear in DownBeat, the jazz world’s most influential magazine, in September.
Bergeron recorded “Bass & Face” during summer and spring breaks over the last two and a half years, in South Florida, New York and New Jersey. His long, illustrious career, in which he’s worked with scores of renowned jazz artists, including Stan Getz, Randy Brecker and Dave Grusin, and played with the Woody Herman and Buddy Rich big bands, enabled him to bring in some exceptional vocal artists.
His first call was to ten-time GRAMMY winner Janis Siegel, an original member of the famed Manhattan Transfer who’d sung with Bergeron’s big band in Miami and did a rare duet with him then. Bergeron believes his recording of “Fair Weather” with NEA Jazz Master Sheila Jordan, a legendary vocalist whom Charlie Parker called “the lady with the million-dollar ears,” was her last before she died in 2025. Bergeron recorded “Two Degrees East, Three Degrees West” and Duke Ellington’s “Sound of Love” with Kevin Mahogany, a longtime close friend and collaborator who taught briefly at the Frost School, in the mid-2000’s, and passed away in 2017.
The other vocalists, all with illustrious careers, are Pete McGuinness, Roseanna Vitro, Lisanne Lyons, George Rabbai, and Deborah Silver, as well as colleagues Reid and Yarling.
Bergeron said collaborating with these artists was inspiring on many levels. “It challenged me to play my instrument differently,” he said. “The first thing is you have to know the lyrics and what the song is about. You have a conversation with the vocalist on their thoughts about the meaning of the song. You have to agree on an approach, because that will dictate how you play. The vocalists won’t always be able to depend on me to give them the harmony, so they have to be exceptional artists with great time feels and great ears for harmony.”
He asked the singers to suggest little-known songs, heightening the album’s sense of exploring new musical territory. Siegel picked “When I Drink,” which was written for her by Italian jazz-pop bass-vocal duo Musica Nuda. “It’s a song she likes to sing a lot,” Bergeron said. “Nobody else knows it. The way she approaches the lyrics, she makes herself so vulnerable.” (Siegel comes to Miami this fall to perform with Bergeron’s big band on Veterans Day and to teach a clinic and masterclass at the Frost School on Nov. 12.)
He said these kinds of creative independent projects are important for teaching artists like him and his Frost School colleagues. “It’s absolutely a requirement,” Bergeron said. “We all want to keep growing and evolving.”
Recording with Yarling, a beloved longtime South Florida artist, educator, and jazz advocate, was both comforting and challenging.
“I’ve been playing music with her for 25 years—she’s like my older sister,” Bergeron said. “It was a no-brainer to have her on the album. The hardest thing was choosing what song to do, because she can do anything; she can scat like Ella Fitzgerald, she’s got ears of gold, she knows every style.” They finally settled on “Audubon Zoo” (also known as “They All Ask’d For You”) and “Iko Iko,” two classics of Mardi Gras from Bergeron’s hometown.
“It was starting to get complicated,” Bergeron remembered. “And I said, ’ Let’s go home to my roots and play a little New Orleans music.”
