Sarah Aili at Analog: An Evening Worth Savoring
Analog cares for a room like a good musician holds a note — with intention. The space lives in a permanent twilight, its warm amber glow catching the vintage audio fixtures behind the bar and silhouettes the sculptural chandelier against the plush red curtain at the back of the stage. It feels tailor-made for jazz: intimate without being cramped, high-end without being precious. The only persistent design flaw is those massive support columns, which cut off sightlines to the stage from several spots in the room. It’s a frustrating quirk in an otherwise beautifully realized listening space.
The hospitality, fortunately, is without flaw. The man at the door graciously helped me to figure out the parking app, and behind the bar, Levi mixed drinks with the same casual confidence the musicians brought to the stage — his Old Fashioned was exceptionally smooth, and yes, Buffalo Trace is the rail bourbon. It proved the ideal companion for a night built around the Great American Songbook.
Sarah Aili brings something to the stage that feels increasingly rare among modern jazz vocalists: she looks like she’s genuinely having fun. Rather than treating these standards as museum pieces, she lets them breathe. You could hear it from the first bars of Irving Berlin’s “Blue Skies,” where her natural charisma made one of the most familiar melodies in American music feel freshly minted. The performance was bright and optimistic, anchored by a rhythm section that knew exactly how much room to give her.
That ensemble was stellar all night. On “Your Love Is Mine,” bassist Rhees Williams opened with a haltingly smooth bassline — restrained in all the right ways — before Timothy Kreis slid in on saxophone. Williams didn’t merely keep time; he constructed a mood for Kreis to speak into, and the result was one of the most beautifully framed moments of the evening.
When the group reached “Misty,” they wisely chose traditionalism. In an era when players routinely deconstruct standards past recognition, there’s something quietly radical about letting Erroll Garner’s masterpiece simply be itself. Their warm reading honored the song’s harmonic bones while keeping Aili’s phrasing comfortably at the center.
Guest vocalist (cofounder of Them Vibes, host of the Just Keep Talking Podcast, and radio personality on Lightning 100) Larry Florman shifted the energy entirely when he ascended to the stage. On “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” he brought a relaxed mid-century sophistication that suggested the Rat Pack without slipping into imitation. Florman understands something essential about those classic crooners: the coolness wasn’t about swagger — it was about rhythmic ease, about letting the lyric lean back into the groove.
His duet with Aili on “You Make Me Feel So Young” was better still. It captured the easy conversational chemistry of the great classic vocal pairings, where the performance is less about competing for the spotlight and more about generous musical exchange.
Aili also demonstrated sharp programming instincts. By including “Time After Time” — the lush 1947 ballad, (not the Cyndi Lauper track) as well as a Pizzarelli-styled “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” she pushed the evening gently outside the standard canon without breaking its spell. It was a welcome reminder that these songs stay alive through thoughtful interpretation, not rigid preservation.
One particularly fun stretch of the set came when the band started taking audience requests for spontaneous jazz covers. Their best trick was turning the Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” into a swinging jazz number—a fantastic preview of a full show they have planned around that concept this August. It was incredible to watch drummer Marlon Patton and Williams lock into a deep pocket on the fly. The whole sequence proved exactly why Florman affectionately called the band “cats.” They seemed ready to play whatever was thrown at them.
That versatility extended to Kreis’ saxophone solo on “Blue Moon,” whose warm, unhurried tone unfolded with patient lyricism rather than virtuosic excess. On “My Funny Valentine,” he swapped the saxophone for clarinet, partnering with trumpeter Andrew Carney in one of the night’s most unexpected sonic pleasures. The blend of the two instruments created a delicate, shifting color where neither dominated the other — chamber-scale orchestration so subtle that the mood changed before you quite understood how they’d done it.
At the piano, Josh Karas was the evening’s quiet MVP. His solos balanced technical command with genuine melodic ideas, but his most important work happened beneath the surface where he subtly reshaping arrangements in real time, tracking the vocal phrasing, shifting harmonic direction on a dime, smoothing transitions so seamlessly that the room barely registered the charts moving underfoot.
Between songs, Aili kept things grounded with stories that felt like genuine conversation. Introducing “My Funny Valentine,” she shared a memory of her grandmother Hazel that added a layer of real-world warmth to the room. Equally charming was the sight of her husband near the back wall, rocking their baby through the whole set. In a stiffer venue, that kind of domestic intimacy might have felt out of place. Here, it felt like jazz doing what it does best — pulling people, families, and communities into the same room.
The night closed with “All of Me,” the title track from Aili’s new album, you should buy it (here!). It was a perfect finale: exuberant, stylish, and genuinely collaborative. Every player on the stand got room to stretch, but the tune never dissolved into a string of disconnected solos. It showcased the band’s greatest strength — how attentively they listen to one another.
Jazz thrives in rooms that feel alive and invite you in. Analog remains one of Nashville’s finest spaces for exactly that, and on Friday night, Sarah Aili and her band made it feel like home.
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