Jazz in July / Midsummer Music Festival
Through July 27
Livestream Available Through July 21

Bill Charlap and Dee Dee Bridgewater seem to exist in a land beyond time. The 38th season of “Jazz in July” opened on Tuesday evening with the series artistic director, Mr. Charlap, and his trio, with bassist Peter Washington and drummer Kenny Washington, playing host to Ms. Bridgewater and trumpeter Nicholas Payton. It was one of the greatest nights I can remember in the history of the series, and I’ve been going almost since the beginning.

I had some inkling of what was coming. Mr. Charlap and Ms. Bridgewater have been performing together for a few years now, including a run at Birdland in 2022. From the outset, it was clear that they were much more than your usual singer-and-accompanist pairing, but something more akin to an outgrowth of the remarkable duo that Mr. Charlap shares with Sandy Stewart, the outstanding veteran vocalist who happens to be his mother.  

The height of the Birdland show was the pianist and the singer working in tandem without any other accompaniment, in a time field of their own devising. Time was no longer a definitive, agreed-upon-concept determined by metronomes and clocks; now, it was elastic, as phrases were stretched out and shortened in order to make a point.  

There’s a reason why most musicians adhere to a rigid, almost draconian concept of time; when you go beyond its boundaries, it’s like the lack of gravity in a science fiction movie. Things tend to fall apart, stuff starts to drift aimlessly, and you not only lose track of the rhythm but the thread of the story.  

Not so with this duo. Somehow, the basic beat of the song seemed more intense than ever. In introducing Ms. Bridgewater, Mr. Charlap quoted lyricist Alan Bergman’s highly apt characterization of her as “the storyteller.” Outside of the restrictions of strict time, the narrative was not lost but rather enhanced: It became more about the story than anything else.

At 92NY, they built to this epiphany, reaching a climax in the middle of the show with a fairly spectacular “Here’s That Rainy Day” and “Honeysuckle Rose,” but they also started strong and ended on a high note — opening and concluding with the Duke Ellington songbook. 

The night got underway with a triptych of Ducal standards, “I’m Beginning to See the Light,” “Caravan,” and “Mood Indigo,” all of which featured the full company, followed by two from Vincent Youmans, “Sometimes I’m Happy” and “I Want to Be Happy.” The latter was a feature for Mr. Payton, who was playing superbly all night.

At that point, it felt like that moment in a ’90s action flick when somebody says, “Don’t look now, but this s— is about to get real.” Ms. Bridgewater and Mr. Charlap started into “Rainy Day” day slowly and deliberately, but gradually widening the time feel and the narrative as well. As they reached the end of the first chorus, somebody’s smartwatch alarm went off and Ms. Bridgewater murmured quietly, “Turn off the church bells.”  

The second chorus was even more legato, even less tethered to gravity’s rainbow, and somehow an even more moving narrative, set in a place where there was no up or down, and yet there was cold and rain just the same.

Messrs. Washington and Washington played very unobtrusively on “Rainy Day,” and then they totally took five on “Honeysuckle Rose.” Mr. Charlap used the countermelody to “Squeeze Me (But Don’t Tease Me)” as a point of reference. The twosome dispatched with the published music and words quickly enough — in a single chorus — before they began improvising in parallel like they were skiing downhill together, with Ms. Bridgewater scatting and Mr. Charlap lingering decorously in the treble, hitting an accidental note that briefly transformed the piano into a trumpet.

Then, they whistled. Yes, together. Yes, in tune. Next they danced after a fashion, without Mr. Charlap rising from the piano bench, but with Ms. Bridgewater adjusting her body language to match what he was playing.  They capped it with a juicy final chorus, Ms. Bridgewater referring to the pianist’s “juicy fat lips.”  It was the sweetest “Honeysuckle” I’ve heard in a long time.

They concluded the evening with a Gershwin ballad, “Someone to Watch Over Me,” a slow and excruciatingly sexy blues, Billie Holiday’s “Fine and Mellow,” and, bringing it back where they started, a rousing Ellington flag waver, “Cotton Tail.”  But it was “Rainy Day” and “Honeysuckle Rose” that sent us to the moon.  

If these two don’t make an album soon, they’re crazy.