This Vocal Quintet Definitely Has a New York State of Mind : Jazz: New York Voices tackles music ranging from John Coltrane to Aretha Franklin, which is just fine with its leader.

New York Voices, the quintet playing at Catalina Bar and Grill in Hollywood through Sunday, has lofty ambitions. Sure, the singers interpret jazz classics from Monk’s “Round Midnight” to Ellington’s “Caravan.” Granted, they mixed Bach with bossa in the wordless “Baroque Samba” and have dipped into pop with words to the Yellowjackets’ “Top Secret.”

Can they have it both ways? Which audience are they aiming at? Why do their lyrics range from socially significant (“National Amnesia”) to utterly bland (“Come Home”)?

Ask Darmon Meader, the group’s leader. As composer and arranger of much of their material, vocal improviser and saxophonist, he plays a significant role in determining the quintet’s direction.

“We all have different backgrounds,” he said. “Consequently you hear various influences and styles at work. I’m at one extreme with my experience as a jazz instrumentalist. Caprice Fox has done a lot of R&B;, also some workshops with Bobby McFerrin. Peter Eldridge had classical training, but his background is ridiculously wide, from early classics up to rock ‘n’ roll. Kim Nazarian and Sara Krieger both have had theatrical experience. You add those up and you kind of get what we do.”

The fivesome is logically named. All the members except Krieger studied at Ithaca College in Upstate New York. In the summer of 1986, the school was invited to take an alumni vocal unit to play at such European events as the North Sea Jazz Festival.

“I was well prepared. For a few years after graduating I’d done resort gigs and explored the vocal jazz idiom as a performer and writer,” said Meader. “We were a big hit in Europe, and back home, four of the six of us decided to form a similar group. We needed one more female voice, and Sara, who had been doing her own thing in New York City for 10 years, joined us in the fall of ’87.”

A contract with GRP Records set the quintet on the road to public awareness. Their first album, released last May, has moved slowly but surely up to the Top 10 on the Billboard jazz chart; meanwhile, as calls for dates improved, the quintet went to Europe last month.

“The Berlin Jazz Festival was a great experience,” said Meader. “We’d been accustomed to playing mostly smaller clubs, so it was nice to be part of something on a grand scale, at the Philharmonic, along with people like Mel Torme and Abbey Lincoln. The reception over there is amazing. They can be very demanding and very critical, but when they like you it’s truly exciting.”

Unlike the precedent-setting Lambert, Hendricks & Ross trio, New York Voices generally avoids the customary practice of setting words to what were originally recorded jazz solos. In “Caravan,” for example, Meader has a long improvised passage that resembles just such a solo, though in fact he devised the melody himself.

“As a saxophone player I base some of the writing on my own improvisational style,” he said. “We don’t want to duplicate what Manhattan Transfer did on the ‘Vocalese’ album.”

New York Voices is evidently finding its own avenue to success. New arrangements include John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps,” Tadd Dameron’s “Lady Bird” and Aretha Franklin’s “Chain of Fools.”

Are they or are they not a jazz group at heart? The answer can be found in those titles: Jazz, it would seem, is a New York vocal state of mind.