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This was, it's safe to say, the first time in many a year that a jazz musician had introduced a piece by saying it was inspired by a Joseph Conrad novel - Victory, to be precise. Just like Daryl Sherman herself, however, the music on Tropical Belt was light, breezy and full of sunlight.
Sherman is one of those singer-pianists who are hard to pigeonhole. The girlish piping voice is reminiscent of Blossom Dearie, and the fact that the impish New Yorker has a regular slot in the lush surroundings of the Waldorf Astoria often leads people to think of her as a cabaret performer. But her passion for swing and her tidy, understated soloing are more than enough to keep the hardcore jazzers happy. Best to think of her, perhaps, as one of those artists, like the late Bobby Short, who knows enough about showbiz convention to realise that jazz still has a future as a form of entertainment.
This was a quietly authoritative set, Sherman fizzing and joking in the genial company of the double-bass player Jeremy Brown and the studious guitarist Dave Cliff. Her Waldorf piano was once the property of Cole Porter, so it was no surprise to find his melodies edging their way to the forefront. You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To was dispatched elegantly, Sherman wrong-footing her audience by opening with the verse to Night and Day. On I Concentrate on You her voice grew darker and more sensuous.
She spends part of each set standing at the microphone, but it is when she is seated at the keyboard that her personality shines through strongest of all. Her playing is spare and epigrammatic; not a note is wasted. The swing quotient is at its highest on extracts from her new album New O'leans. Sherman may be dainty, but she could hold her own on a raucous night in the French Quarter.