The Yancie Taylor Quintet, featuring Thu Ho
Geoffrey's Inner Circle
410 14th Street, Oakland, California
February 1, 2026
They traditionally call it the Snow Moon, what gazed down at the mostly cold continent of North America on the first Sunday night of this month. But it was balmy and snowless in downtown Oakland, so I’ll rename it the Show Moon for its position, like a spotlight, high above the corner of 14th & Franklin, where a happy crowd was walking up to Geoffrey’s Inner Circle to see jazz singer Thu Ho with vibraphonist Yancie Taylor’s band.
The band attracted attention to the quintet of instrumentalists with a hat trick of jazz standards by Thelonious Monk, Horace Silver, and Wayne Shorter, respectively. Throughout the evening, Taylor both rang out the spirit of every song and effectively captained the rest of his crew. Fellow attendee and friend Jimmy Goetz, a sometime teacher of and practitioner of bass in cover bands, was particularly impressed by the dexterous rapid subdivisions of Aaron Germain on upright bass.
On her way to the stage, Thu Ho, clad closely in a gown patterned with a polychromatic aviary, smile-checked perennial audience member and sometime performer Wilbert “Cowboy” McAlister, himself garbed in an embroidered white jacket and a white Stetson. Ho draws lots of fans to her regular appearances at Geoffrey’s, Biscuits and Blues, the Black Cat, and other venues around the Bay, and she’s started traveling to away gigs in the New York City area.
Ho opened with the dusky blues ballad “Black Coffee”; she swirled the s’s, the lines phrased naturally like conversation at a bar, unbound by the steady beat of Benny Watson on piano, Raul Ramirez on drums, and Germain on bass. She sustained the mood with Mel Tormé’s “Bound to Be Blue”, dressing the lyrics in a wardrobeful of different textures, and catwalking them in a variety of dynamics.
"I Want a Sunday Kind of Love", with Cowboy listening and, behind him, Dr. Stephen Hall. Video by Jeff Kaliss
Over the many years I’ve heard her, Ho has tangibly improved her vocal instrument and expanded her palate, to the point that she can entertain across many pages of the American songbook. Her hearth glowed brightly and warmly on Cole Porter’s “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To”, and her flatting the tonic final note was an artful touch. Germain, also, proved his virtuosity across the diversity of the song list, on this number conveying more intimacy than cleverness, then tickling, alongside Watson’s keyboard, Ho’s sunnily amorous “A Sunday Kind of Love”.
The break between sets allowed for delectable excursions. To the left, the gorgeous venerable barroom, to the right a generously priced and provisioned soul food buffet, with fried fish, fried or boiled chicken, greens, muffins, rice & beans, macaroni & cheese, and salad. Folks took this all back to their seats and tables while watching David Sturdevant take the stage for a rowdy, comical rendering of “San Francisco Bay Blues”, written by Jesse Fuller, who moved to Oakland in 1929 to work for the Southern Pacific Railroad. Sturdevant, both singing and blowing harmonica (somewhat better on the latter) was swingingly backed by Taylor, Germain, and young tenor saxophonist Ranzel Merritt.
Pianist Watson vocalized in a pleasant baritone-tenor on Michael Franks’s “The Lady Wants to Know”, from 1977. Germain and Ramirez enhanced this somewhat simplistic song, which my fellow dad Jimmy said evoked Steely Dan, from the same era. A rendition of “Autumn Leaves” had Cowboy up and two-stepping with a lovely adjoining member of the audience. Merritt played with sincere commitment, but at times sounded unfamiliar with the harmonic changes and melody lines of this and some other parts of the set list.
Sturdevant then retired and Ho retook the stage, complimenting the buffet before percolating Fats Waller and Andy Razaf’s “Honeysuckle Rose”. She worked an interesting tonicization changeup on the second line of the chorus, also scatting a chorus, effectively making the standard her own. An impressive mood switch for “Guess Who I Saw Today” showcased Ho’s theatricality, evoking dulcet regret, paired patiently by Germain. Her delivery shifted convincingly from chorus to chorus, and her slide into and vibrato out of the tune’s final note was stunning.
Thu Ho slips a scat into "Honeysuckle Rose" Video by Jeff Kaliss
There followed a surprise dedication of Bill Evans’s lovely “Waltz for Debby” to me and my wife Louise. Evans wrote the song for his niece Debby in 1956, with lyrics added eight years later by journalist and author Gene Lees. Ho spoke of the “bitter sweetness of watching your kids grow up”, and referenced our kids Natalie and Nick, whom she’s known for over a decade since their teen years, and Luke, her son with husband Don Hayler. She tendered the tune lovingly, shifting from waltz to common time at its conclusion.
That's all, folks! Video by Jeff Kaliss
Pulsing sassily upbeat to finish the evening with “Teach Me Tonight”, Ho elicited audible approbation from venue owner Geoffrey Pete at the rear of the hall. (He’d confided to me that this is his favorite of her songs). There was extended applause afterwards, and shared gratitude from my fellow parents, for most of whom the place and the performers were new experiences. I took Stephen Hall backstage to meet Ho — he’s a psychiatrist and she, by day, is a pediatric endocrinologist. They talked shop and sentiment.
Ho will be back at Geoffrey’s on May 3rd. Her latest album, Live at the Sausalito Seahorse, is available on Amazon, Apple Music, and Spotify. And she’ll have another, recorded at the Black Cat last year, out this spring.
