Singer Lisa Fischer returns, with yet another new project, to SF

Lisa Fischer is a master shapeshifter, and trying to get a firm grasp on her music is a fool’s errand. Just when you think she’s settled into a particular style or setting she heads off in a new direction, like her four-night run at the SFJAZZ Center with the Grammy Award-winning Gullah jazz combo Ranky Tanky, which opens on Nov. 3.

Something of an underground legend on the New York scene through the 1980s, Fischer was thriving as a studio musician when her 1991 Narada Michael Walden-produced debut album “So Intense” (Elektra) set her on a star-bound trajectory. The chart-topping R&B hit, “How Can I Ease the Pain,” earned her a Grammy Award for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance.

But instead of embracing the spotlight, she decided to focus on her work as an elite background singer with acts like the Rolling Stones, Luther Vandross, Tina Turner, and Sting. Her protean superpowers meant she could manifest just the right sound, texture and energy for any situation, whether the music called for full-throated rock belting, sanctified signifying, or imploringly sensuous R&B crooning.

“I love to watch people when they’re performing knowing that they can fly without a care in the world,” she wrote in an email about her love of supporting other artists.

In one of American music’s most enthralling reinventions, Fischer swooped back into the spotlight some three decades after “How Can I Ease the Pain” when she was featured in “20 Feet From Stardom.” Focusing on the Black women backup vocalists who power so many pop and rock acts, the 2014 Academy Award-winning documentary gave her the impetus to seize the stage as a marquee name in her own right.

Rather than creating a unified musical persona like the stars who long depended upon her vocal malleability, Fischer has continued to stretch, expand and redefine herself, an enthralling evolution that’s unfolded on Bay Area stages. From her first appearances in 2015 with the world music/jazz/ rock combo Grand Baton and her work with pianist/arranger Billy Childs on his Grammy Award-winning project “Map to the Treasure: Reimagining Laura Nyro” to her ongoing collaborations with Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet and pianist Taylor Eigsti, Fischer keeps decanting intoxicating new wine from sturdy old bottles.

In June she served up a whole new vintage at Kuumbwa Jazz Center, joining forces for the first time with Ranky Tanky, a group already featuring the powerhouse vocalist Quiana Parler. While they each sing a number or two individually each set, they spend most of the concerts working together. In a recent email Parler was still vibrating with excitement about the collaboration, describing Fischer’s voice as “electrifying, timeless, and a force to be reckoned with. I am so honored to be able to share the stage with such great music royalty!”

Fischer’s gift for thriving and enhancing any musical setting offers a fascinating contrast to Ranky Tanky, a quintet rooted in a very specific place and culture that has tenaciously clung to the Georgia sea islands and South Carolina’s Lowcountry. Their rollicking repertoire builds on Gullah songs, chants and rhythms that have been passed down for centuries from West Africa within a resilient archipelago of coastal Black communities. Rather than presenting the music as artifacts, Ranky Tanky combines traditional Gullah songs with jazz and other African diaspora idioms.

Featuring drummer Quentin Baxter, trumpeter/vocalist Charlton Singleton, bassist Kevin Hamilton and guitarist Clay Ross, the group first bonded as jazz-loving music students at the College of Charleston in the mid-’90s. They went on to form a jazz quartet called the Gradual Lean, playing everything from Duke Ellington to Rick James.

Ranky Tanky was born when the musicians started arranging the Gullah songs traditionally rendered via body percussion and a cappella call-and-response vocals in the context of jazz instrumentation. The band’s eponymous 2017 album topped the jazz charts, and its follow-up, 2019’s “Good Time,” won the Grammy Award for best regional roots music album.

A collaboration with Bobby McFerrin paved the way for Ranky Tanky’s connection with Fischer, who shares the same manager as McFerrin, Linda Goldstein. The appeal of working together was obvious, but also raised lots of questions.

“Do we learn her music? Does she learn ours? How is this going to work?” said Baxter, who recently release a brilliant album of his own, “Art Moves Jazz,” featuring a suite he presented last December when the San Francisco Symphony relaunched its live SoundBox series.

At the Monterey Jazz Festival in September, they’d clearly figured out some compelling answers, with Fischer delivering a shattering version of “Wild Hoses” while reveling in Gullah grooves and Parler’s company.

“How often do you hear powerhouse vocalists sing together, sharing the stage for the entire concert?” Baxter said. “We’re still figuring out how this works, but it’s been amazing. Lisa’s manager says we ‘Gullahfy’ her songs. She’s such a versatile vocalist. She’s got so much imagination  and zero inhibitions in approaching any of it.”

Contact Andrew Gilbert at [email protected].

MS. LISA FISCHER & RANKY TANKY

When: 7:30 p.m. Nov. 3-5, 7 p.m. Nov. 6

Where: SFJAZZ Center’s Miner Auditorium, 201 Franklin St., San Francisco

Tickets: $25-$85; 866-920-5299, www.sfjazz.org