Pe­ter Ray Blood

?Re­mem­ber the name Bren­da But­ler. I pre­dict it will go house­hold pret­ty soon. It's been a while since an artiste blew me away the way Bren­da did when she per­formed on the Song­birds se­ries, at Au­ra on Cipri­ani Boule­vard, Port-of-Spain, on Sun­day evening. The at­trac­tive, af­fa­ble, pleas­ant­ly plump south­ern song­bird served up a de­lec­table menu of jazz and pop­u­lar mu­sic, cour­tesy Pro­duc­tion One Lim­it­ed. Ap­par­ent­ly I was the last per­son to hear about But­ler, as her large au­di­ence in­clud­ed jazz di­vas like Pat­ti Rogers and Vaugh­nette Big­ford, crit­i­cal­ly ac­claimed flautist and vo­cal­ist Ruth Os­man, pop­u­lar so­ca star Ri­zon, and The Vibe 105FM di­rec­tor Chris Boynes.

But­ler seems to have a pref­er­ence for In­dia.Arie, but al­so en­ticed and thrilled with cov­ers of fe­male jazz greats Ni­na Si­mone, Jill Scott, Et­ta James, Ani­ta Bak­er, Sade and Erykah Badu, as well as Michael Jack­son, Luther Van­dross, John Leg­end, Ray Charles and Bob Mar­ley. One of the pos­i­tive and unique fea­tures of But­ler's per­for­mance is her abil­i­ty to con­vey a poignant and rel­e­vant mes­sage as a pre­am­ble to her every se­lec­tion. In all, she ren­dered 19 items, all ad­dress­ing is­sues or­di­nary peo­ple face every day. Next up in the Song­birds se­ries is Vaugh­nette Big­ford on No­vem­ber 4, at the same venue.