# The intimate and stirring performance by Becca Stevens: Video, Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2019/10/18/the-intimate-and-stirring-performance-by-becca-stevens-video-photos/
- Published: 2019-10-18T16:03:50+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**As a singer, a songwriter and a player of stringed instruments, Becca Stevens 
has thrived in almost every conceivable setting.**

If you haven’t seen the Becca Stevens Band, maybe you recently caught her in a supporting
role, playing NPR Tiny Desk Concerts with Hall of Fame folksinger David Crosby or
youngblood polymath Jacob Collier. Maybe you heard her in the past with Tillery,
a collective trio. Maybe you heard her with pianist Billy Childs in 2016, singing
Laura Nyro’s songs at the WBGO Yamaha Salon.

Just days before she performed her _own_ songs at the WBGO Yamaha Salon, Stevens
was in Cologne, Germany, working with the WDR Funkhausorchester, under the baton
of acclaimed orchestrator Vince Mendoza. Her Yamaha Salon set took on a far more
intimate scale: Stevens played the first half alone, and the second half joined 
only by guitarist Jan Esbra.

Her set list drew partly from _Regina, _a category-stretching album released in 
2017, and partly from _Wonderbloom_, which will push those boundaries even farther
when it’s released next spring on GroundUP Music. I served as host for the evening,
speaking with Becca about her uncategorizable style, her training in jazz and traditional
folk music, and the inspiration behind her clear-eyed and openhearted songs. (Stevens
coproduced _Wonderbloom_ with Nic Hard, who was in the audience; two tunes from 
the new album appear here in their broadcast premiere.)

She opened with two songs from _Regina: _its heraldic title track, followed by “
Ophelia,” whose verses sprawl forward like the tendrils of a vine. Then came “Tillery,”
inspired by the poetry of Jane Tyson Clement, and featured both on the album called
_Tillery _and on Stevens’ own _Perfect Animal._

When Esbra joined Stevens — bringing not only a second guitar but also a rare understanding
of her technique, as she explained — they first finessed another _Regina _song, “
Lean On.” Then came the two new songs: “Between You & Me,” a slow-motion romantic
dreamscape, and “Heather’s Letters to Her Mother,” a breathtaking ballad, which 
initially sprang out of an exhortation from David Crosby.

[[

Recalling the tragic death of Heather Heyer at a protest in Charlottesville, Va.
in 2017, Crosby charged Stevens with writing a song. As she recalls here, it took
a while before she arrived at the premise for “Heather’s Letters,” with each stanza
moving forward in time, toward (and beyond) that fateful day.

It’s a powerful song, no less for its evocative harmonic color than the understated
emotion in its lyrics. Stevens, in giving voice to someone silenced by injustice,
carefully calibrates the mood: in the end, it’s both heavyhearted and hopeful.

“We are nothing without love,” goes one line in the song, and Stevens eventually
turned it into a singalong refrain. No microphones were trained on the audience,
so you can’t hear it in the video — but the room filled with voices, bringing some
additional weight to that meaningful “We.”

![](https://i0.wp.com/www.wbgo.org/sites/wbgo/files/styles/medium/public/201910/
becca_stevens_crop.png?w=640&ssl=1)

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