Maria Anadon Feat. Five Play - Smile
ARTIST........: Maria Anadon Feat. Five Play
TITLE.........: Smile
LABEL.........: iPlay
URL...........: http://mariaanadon.blogs.sapo.pt
GENRE.........: Jazz
QUALITY:......: 173 kbps avg/ 44100Hz / Joint Stereo
RIP DATE......: 2011-03-24
RELEASE DATE..: 2010-07-22
Tracklist:
----------
01. A Sleepin' Bee 4:37
02. It's Alright With Me 6:12
03. What Is This Thing Called Love 3:36
04. I Mean You 3:20
05. Love For Sale 4:41
06. Misty 4:51
07. My Favorite Things 5:03
08. So In Love 5:58
09. Stockholm Sweetnin' 3:58
10. The Masquerade Is Over 4:26
11. These Foolish Things 5:05
12. Well You Needn't 3:28
13. I Love Being Here With You 4:24
14. Smile 3:22
Total 63:01
Release Notes:
Notes by Will Friedwald
It took me about two seconds to get it. But now I got it. And I like it. What we
have here is a Portuguese singer, steeped in the Portuguese-Brazilian musical
idioms (including bossa nova, along with many other forms of the Portuguese and
Spanish-speaking worlds), singing The Great American Songbook (plus one Antonio
Carlos Jobim standard thrown in as dessert) with an American jazz group.
Even without the parenthetical specifics, I donÆt know of any other album like
this. The bossa nova, though born in Brazil, had been, from the beginning,
deeply influenced by American jazz and pop. Yet ever since the music washed up
on the shores of North America the channels of communication generally operated
in only one direction. From Charlie Byrd and Stan Getz onwards, North American
musicians and singers have joyfully adopted the Brazilian idiom in general and
the songs of Jobim and Joao Gilberto specifically. Yet it has been rare to find
Brazilians and Portuguese musicians bringing South American rhythms to North
American songs. When Frank Sinatra recorded his classic collaboration with Jobim
in 1967, he included a few well-known songs by Irving Berlin, among others, but
that, in general was an exception. (Another such exception occurred more
recently when the jazz singer Mark Murphy recorded The Latin Porter, a set of
Cole Porter songs in Pan American styles.)
Yet itÆs hard to think of a case of a Latin singer doing North American music to
a Brazilian beat, especially as the focus of an entire album. Ms. Anadon is well
known in the Latin world for her mastery of the various idioms, such as bossa
nova, salsa, fado, Afro Cuban (and probably choro, tango, mariachi and even
zarzuela as well, I shouldnÆt be surprised). For this project, she addresses a
variety of styles and techniques associated with the United States, moving well
beyond the boundaries of latin jazz into straight 4/4 swingtime, scat singing,
blues, ballads, bebop, vocalese, and show music.
Ms. AnadonÆs collaborators are every bit as multi-cultural as she is.
The group Five Play, which is, in this case, four musicians drawn from the ranks
of the all-female big band Diva, has re-morphed into another subdivision, this
one entitled ôFive PlayÆs Women Of The World.ö The combo is accurately described
as an American band, even though only drummer and leader Sherrie Maricle was
born in this hemisphere. The rest of the rhythm section, Tomoko Ohno, piano, and
Noriko Ueda, bass, comes from Japan, and the star multi-reed player, Anat Cohen,
is Israeli. The fifth member is, for this project, the Portuguese-born Ms.
Anadon.
One thing that Ms. Anadon does do very consistently is bring a fresh and
original approach to every song she sings, using the bossa beat more or less as
a jumping-off point rather than a final destination. She turns the famous
FinianÆs Rainbow aria Old Devil Moon into a fast and funky samba, further
animated by scat interjections, while I DidnÆt Know What Time It Was, becomes an
introverted, reflective piece spotlighting Ms. CohenÆs formidable clarinet
playing. Ms. UedaÆs bass solo is supported lightly but strongly by finger
cymbals, triangles, and other percussion instruments from Ms. Maricle.
Ms. Anadon is obviously trying to tell us something in moving from a song about
wanting to know something to a song about reassuring what one already knows.
Confirmation is a rare Charlie Parker original not based on the blues or
standard chord changes, and a piece widely heard since the æ50s. It has existed
in many guises û John Coltrane reworked it into 26-2 and Sonny Rollins and Miles
Davis called it I Know (get it?) û but this lyric by singer and ornithologist
Sheila Jordan is the most substantially vocal version. Like Ms. Jordan, Ms.
Anadon skillfully negotiates this intricate melody and tricky text, even in this
breathless bebop tempo.
The other vocalese-like number, which is to say, a case when words have been
added to a famous jazz instrumental, is arranger Oliver NelsonÆs most famous
composition, Stolen Moments. Mark Murphy added these words roughly a decade
after the fact, by which time the piece had become a jazz standard. Ms. Anadon
shifts the perspective to a female one and also improves on some of the more
awkward spots in the text. Here, Ms. Cohen evokes the distinctive,
buoyantly-toned tenor players of the æ60s, like Joe Henderson and Hank Mobley.
Stolen Moments is also NelsonÆs elaboration on the minor-key blues form (he
published it in C-minor, 15 bars rather than 12) and Black Coffee is
fundamentally the 12-bar blues. Composer Sonny Burke was inspired by an ancient
blues line that turned up earlier in Mary Lou WilliamsÆs WhatÆs Your Story,
Morning Glory and later in Heartbreak Hotel. Both Ms. Anadon and Ms. Cohen,
playing her funkiest tenor ever here, treat it like a pure blues, accompanied
for the most part only by Ms. UedaÆs bass. The instrumental coda, in which Ms.
Anadon, humming and moaning, and Ms. Cohen, weave in and out of each other, is
for me the beauty part of the track.
You DonÆt Know What Love Is (introduced by the under-appreciated jazz singer and
comic Martha Raye) also comes out of the spirit of the blues. Composers Don Raye
and Gene DePaul were actually quite well-immersed in the blues tradition, and
they would write a number of successful songs in that idiom. Ms. Anadon and Ms.
Cohen also treat You DonÆt Knowà (published in F minor) like a pure minor blues,
albeit one with a bridge, and they get in some of their funkiest moments here.
Ms. Maricle and Ms. Ohno sit out on Black Coffee (perhaps theyÆre tea drinkers);
My One And Only Love is primarily just Ms. Anadon and Ms. Ohno, although the
rest of the quintet re-enters at the end of the first chorus. Tenderly is voice
and piano all the way, in the tradition of the duet recording by Ella Fitzgerald
and Oscar Peterson. To me, these are the prettiest ballads of the set.
The fastest tearer-upper is Bob DoroughÆs rootinÆ and tootinÆ Devil May Care, a
tune that is fast becoming a modern day jazz perennial. Comes Love is from a
long-forgotten revue called Yokel Boy, in which it was introduced by hillbilly
commedienne Judy Canova. The song was widely recorded in 1939 but then forgotten
for 15 years until Sylvia Syms resurrected it 15 years later, and for the last
50 years has been one of the most popular tunes among vocal jazzers. Ms.
AnadonÆs vocal conveys not only a keen sense of time but also one of humor, in
that lyricist Lew BrownÆs rhythmic jokes are not easy to pull off even for a
native English speaker. Both Anadon and Cohen, demonstrating her formidable
skill on the clarinet, are as sinewy and insinuating as love itself, both voices
suggesting the original serpent who tempting Adam and Eve, in a minor key lament
(published in G minor) that sounds equal parts Havana and Tel Aviv.
Equally tricky is IÆm Old Fashioned which is sort of both old-fashioned and
new-fangled at the same time; Ms. Anadon and Ms. Cohen begin by intertwining
together (otherwise unaccompanied) in a contrapuntal cadenza, finding the same
baroque core in Jerome KernÆs music that George Shearing (and others) have
famously found in KernÆs Pick Yourself Up. When they get to the chorus, it goes
into straight ahead swing, with all four instruments trading fours around the
drums (and Ms. Ohno quoting I Got Rhythm in the process) and building to a
boppish closer.
WouldnÆt It Be Loverly? is entirely unpredictable: without getting into the
cultural ramifications of a Portuguese singer doing an American show tune
originally written in an English cockney accent (nobody on this side of the
Atlantic ever said ôloverly,ö with the possible exception of Al Hibbler). More
to the point, here is a gentle air written in a harmless two-four aggressively
revved up into a almost abrasively hard-swinging four. Done by Ms. Anadon and
the rhythm section alone. Ms. Ohno is the most prominently featured co-star
here, and her phrasing and rhythmic accents are tellingly Basie-esque.
Appropriately for a song introduced by Tony Bennett, Ms. Anadon employs a sense
of dynamics informed by both Mr. Bennett and Count Basie on The Best Is Yet To
Come. She starts small and quiet with just the trio, then kicks the excitement
up a notch with the entrance of Ms. Cohen about halfway through. The idea of the
best being yet to come is more than a song title, because it leads directly into
the kind of music that Ms. Anadon does best of all, in her original idiom,
JobimÆs One Note Samba.
As mentioned at the beginning, this South American standard serves as a sort of
chaser shot for the 13 North American standards that preceded it. Like Duke
EllingtonÆs C-Jam Blues, it demands rhythmic virtuousity on the part of the
interpreter since nearly all of the medley is done on a single note. She does in
a quick, brief chorus that proves that brevity is the soul of swing, and
sometimes the most important part of swinging is knowing exactly where to cut
off a note. Or when to end an album. Or even a liner note. Like here.