Bill Charlap Trio: Then And Again (Blue Note)
For me this album represents an atoll of tranquillity in a sea of chaos. For though it was recorded barely one year ago as I write – 9 September 2023 at the Village Vanguard, New York – both the content and style of performing afford a comfort blanket to this reviewer, for too long under aural attack by labels like “fusion” and “next generation”.
I was fortunate enough to see Charlap performing live in a long-ago London Jazz Festival and I retain fond memories of the evening. Charlap has a solid pedigree in the business; his late father, “Moose”, was a gifted Broadway composer, and wrote at least one outstanding song, I Was Telling Him About You, whilst his mum, Sandy Stewart, is a highly gifted vocalist in the pop, jazz and cabaret field, whose far too few albums have a treasured place on my shelves.
Along with Peter Washington (bass) and Kenny Washington (drums), Bill showed up for work on a September evening last year and, with his two cohorts, beguiled the customers at the Vanguard with some vintage, easy-listening jazz. Alas, I wasn’t there but I can tell you that this album managed to capture and preserve in ether eight of them for your listening pleasure; all but two are time-honoured standards.
The trio give the impression of being a longstanding unit, as polished as the floor at the Hammersmith Palais, yet for all I know they met for the first time on the day of the gig. Although they improvise – both sidemen are rewarded with four and eight-bar breaks throughout – they never stray too far from the melody and all three display chops that would have my local butcher salivating.
The oldest number by a country mile is the Victor Young-Ned Washington ballad I Don’t Stand A Ghost Of A Chance With You, from 1932, and for me the trio’s take on this just shades the other seven. You may well prefer All The Things You Are, Darn That Dream, or indeed, any one or all of the eight top-drawer tracks. Whatever: if you’re an old saddo like me, and feel your nostrils start to twitch at the sound of “bring back the Milk Bars”, then, again like me, you’ll bask in an album that’s as cosy as a well-broken-in pair of slippers on a mild winter’s evening.
Ann Kittredge: Romantic Notions (King Kosmo)
Ms Kittredge has selected material that spans a time period of 1959 to 2008, all but half a century, which is a fairly decent range. The selection from 1959 is Together, Wherever We Go, a tune from the show Gypsy, written by Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim and very much in the tradition of literate lyrics welded seamlessly onto soaring melody. The original was jaunty and upbeat and written for trio but Ms Kittredge has opted to slow the tempo to a heartbeat and perform it solo.
I have to confess that Together is one of only four out of 12 numbers that I’ve heard of – the other three are Mr. Tambourine Man, I Just Called To Say I Love You, and Didn’t We. Her accompaniment is unusual – fiddle, cello, flute and percussion – and I’m sure there will be hundreds, if not thousands who will be only too happy to laud it, as Will Friedwald has already done in his liner notes.
