Elemental, an album of jazz standards featuring the combined talents of jazz vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater and jazz pianist Bill Charlap, has generated considerable excitement since its release this June. The Wall Street Journal called the album “exuberantly original,” while Lisa Jo Sagolla, writing for BistroAwards.com, praised the artists’ success in “conjuring a vast spectrum of sonic relationships that reward keen and careful listening.” 

I concur. This project is a fireworks display. Set against the Grand Canyon. In CinemaScope. 

And it’s the work of but one singer and one keyboardist.

The album grew out of an experiment instigated by Bridgewater, or, rather, by Bridgewater’s “spirit voice.” Back in the long-ago, considerably less-complicated pre-pandemic year of 2019, that voice whispered in her ear one day two unmistakable words: “Bill Charlap.” 

The message puzzled her, as she’d never before given the idea of working with Charlap any real consideration. But when her spirit voice speaks to Dee Dee, Dee Dee heeds the message. Now, some six years later, she’s very happy the voice made itself heard when it did.

Recently, I had the opportunity to speak by phone with both Bridgewater and Charlap, in separate phone calls. Listening about the project from two points of view was illuminating.

When they first met up, soon after the Dee Dee epiphany, the idea was not specifically to do an album together but to team up for some live shows. Charlap had assumed that Bridgewater would ask to work with him and his trio, so he was surprised to learn she was instead suggesting a one-on-one teaming. 

“So, she wants to get involved in a sort of ping-pong [game] and bring out all the possibilities for orchestration that could happen between piano and voice…” he surmised.

The two artists established a few ground rules and then got to work, exploring classic songs from the traditional jazz repertoire that they both were versed in—songs from such composers as Duke Ellington, Cole Porter, and Fats Waller.

And exploring has been what they’ve continued to do, in live performances up to, throughout, and beyond the Elemental recording. The duo did not just “work up” arrangements and then freeze them for use in their shows. Not at all. Every song in every set in every show is performed extemporaneously, in a sort of genius-level jam-session mode. No two performances of—say—Porter’s “Love for Sale” or Ellington’s “Caravan” come close to being identical. 

“It all happens on the bandstand,” Charlap told me.

Before their collaboration began, Bridgewater and Charlap certainly knew and respected each other’s work, but before this project, neither knew much, precisely, about the other’s ways of working. 

In many respects, they seemed polar opposites. Writing of Charlap in Boston’s The Arts Fuse online magazine, Jon Garelick recently noted of the pianist: “[He] is hardcore mainstream. … He is not breaking new ground. He is working securely in an established tradition and making it shine….” By contrast, Jon Murph wrote of Bridgewater in JazzTimes, “Whenever she graces the stage, she pushes the envelope through her dramatic interpretations, virtuosic scatting and daring showmanship.”

The discrepancy in their approaches was not lost on Bridgewater: “I thought: “What? We’re so far apart. If you look on paper at where we’re going individually, you would never put us together. It did just not seem like a natural coupling.”

But, although they were very different kinds of performers, there was at least one commonality in their background: each had a connection to musical theatre.

Let’s get theatrical

Charlap’s father was Moose Charlap, a composer of musicals, most famous for his work on Broadway’s (and television’s) Peter Pan (1954). His mother is cabaret singer Sandy Stewart, who was awarded 2025’s ASCAP-Bob Harrington Lifetime Achievement Bistro Award. (She also happens to be a deeply devoted aficionado of Broadway composer Cole Porter.)

Bridgewater found success as an actress early in her career, creating the role of Glinda in Broadway’s The Wiz in 1974. (Young Bill Charlap saw young Dee Dee perform that role back when he was a schoolboy.)

“I believe Bill understands my theatricality because of his exposure to theatre through his father and through the friends of both of his parents, and with his mother—with Sandy,” said Bridgewater. She noted that Charlap has an encyclopedic knowledge of show music and related American Songbook titles.

Shooing away any early misgivings, they began, in very early 2020, to perform together in front of audiences. For Bridgewater, it was fun, but it also felt challenging, even dangerous. She and Charlap were playing before paying customers while still getting to know each other musically. What if listeners hated what they were doing? Also, cutting-edge Dee Dee was singing traditional jazz and American Songbook repertoire in, perhaps, a more focused way than ever before in her career: “I felt extremely exposed and extremely vulnerable.” 

To their relief, audiences responded favorably. But then came the pandemic. When it hit, in March 2020, it stopped the collaboration cold. I’d thought that perhaps the two artists would have found a way while sheltered in place to perfect their show in private. But, again, the work they were doing was almost completely off-the-cuff. What they needed more than anything at this point in the development process was more live audiences, who could provide them with vital feedback.

They returned to jazz stages in 2021, with masked, socially distanced live audiences as well as homebound customers experiencing the shows in livestream. “It was very weird, you know,” Charlap said. “It felt like we were in a sci-fi movie.”

He adds: “Dee Dee had a special mask that looked like it came from the Renaissance period. It was great: one of those long beak sorts of things. Typically, she had figured out a way to make it work in her favor. Obviously, she took that off to sing.”

Bridgewater laughed when I asked her about this mask. She explained that she came upon the idea when she was having dinner in New Orleans with a couple she knew: a costume-designer friend and her husband. Dee Dee took off her blue pleated mask that night, and her guests broke into laughter. “I asked, ‘What are you laughing at?’ and they said, ‘Whatever happened to Baby Jane?’ I had put on red lipstick and it was smeared some of everywhere.” 

The designer thought the beak-mask idea was crazy, but Bridgewater insisted. So, the friend committed to creating the mask. “I was trying to turn adversity into something else. Something positive.”

Dynamic duo

As the pandemic abated, the Bridgewater/Charlap team continued to perform together, becoming more and more at ease with each other. 

“What was surprising and enlightening, and exciting,” said Charlap, “was the amount of communication and trust, in terms of how far we could go in any direction at any point. Dee Dee has a perfect [sense] of time, so we always know where the beat is, and that’s very important in a duo, especially with what we do together.”

For her part, Bridgewater enjoyed watching Charlap loosen up onstage:

“Bill became less and less serious and started clowning around. Sometimes we’ll both just whistle our solos. I’ve whistled [while performing] before, but to have a whistling exchange? That’s new. And that Bill would go there? That’s new. Sometimes I get him to sing. ’Cause he can sing.”

Eventually, some elements on some songs carried over from show to show: things like intros and outros. But the goal has always been to make each iteration a completely new, in-the-moment experience: a fresh game of ping-pong every time.

“Sometimes I’m an accompanist, sometimes I’m an orchestra…” Charlap explained. Sometimes she’s the accompanist. … We switch roles very quickly back and forth. … We’re dance partners in that sense. One leads, one follows; one leads, one follows. And sometimes that [switch] happens within one turn.”

“Audible calling card”

The Elemental album, released under the Mack Avenue Music Group label, was recorded in about three days, in December of 2023 at Sear Sound studio in Manhattan, which happens to have a nine-foot Steinway that Charlap loves. Tulani Bridgewater (Dee Dee’s daughter) produced the album. Songs on the recording include “I’m Beginning to See the Light,” “’Swonderful,” and “In the Still of the Night.”

There had been one attempt, in San Francisco, to capture a live performance. But Bridgewater had not liked the sound quality of the recording. And she felt that there had been a self-consciousness in the performance, with the duo too focused on the audience and not enough on what they were doing musically. And so, she, Charlap, and Tulani went into the studio. One song from the album, “Honeysuckle Rose,” was released as a single before the album’s release.

Bridgewater said she sees the album as a sort of business card or “audible calling card.” She had not recorded an album since 2017. The existence of Elemental has helped her drum up interest in live shows for herself and Charlap. They have booked engagements in Brazil and Japan for coming months. (There will also be five nights of shows in New York at Birdland, January 6-10, 2026.)

The live shows have continued to evolve, and there are now many songs to choose from in their repertory, besides those on the album—somewhere between 30 and 40 titles in all, according to Bridgewater.

I asked both performers about the album’s title. Charlap said that the name decision came from Dee Dee and Tulani, but his understanding is that it has to do with paring things back to basics. Bridgewater (the mother, that is) confirmed this:

“Tulani came up with the title. I said, ‘You know, we’re stripped down to basics… It’s just the two of us.’ 

“And Tulani said, ‘Elementary. Elementary, Mommy. Elemental.’ And that’s how that happened.”

###