ALL THAT JAZZ
Eden Brown is singing a song about running a red light, her voice warm and melting. The 17-year-old picks the strings of a blood-red electric guitar slung over her shoulder. Rain patters the window and drips off a magnolia tree outside.
Brown is the lead singer of Crumbly Jack, a groovy four-piece jazz funk band whose members have been picking up awards at increasingly contested competitions around the country. Today, she has caught the InterCity bus from her hometown of Palmerston North to join her three band mates in Wellington — Louis Holland, 16, who’s thumping drums and tingling a cymbal; Theo Thompson, 15, who warms up his guitar beneath a shelf packed with books and board games; and 16-year-old Jack Harris, whose fingers fly over a Rubik’s cube as his saxophone sits at his feet.
At the prestigious National Youth Jazz Competition in Tauranga in April, Crumbly Jack snagged joint top jazz band (sharing the prize with Holland, Thompson and Harris’ other jazz band, the seven-member Mel Stevenson). Holland was named the most outstanding young musician, out of 400 entrants, and Brown was awarded best jazz vocalist. When Brown sings she sounds like a young Hollie Smith; and she draws inspiration from the American neo-soul singer Erykah Badu, who is often compared to
