Word: jazzing
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Bringing Fantasia back to life has been a long slog for the Roy Disney team. They considered including jazz, world music, the Beatles, Andrew Lloyd Webber; finally they stuck with the Old Masters. Among the candidates (some of which had been proposed for Walt's "organic" Fantasia): Flight of the Bumblebee; the Mozart piece that incorporates Twinkle Twinkle Little Star; Brahms' First Symphony; Dvorak's Ninth; even Beethoven's Ninth. Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini had a nifty concept (a nightmare and a dream struggling for a sleeping child's soul), but it fell through...
...those titles aren't as familiar as Gershwin's or Porter's, there's reason for it. Historically, standards became standards by dint of three forces: cast albums and revivals of the musicals they arise from; jazz musicians mining the repertoire; and Frank Sinatra. But Coward's musicals are theatrically his weakest work; the harmonic simplicity of his tunes--one of the elements that give them their charm--provides scant inspiration for improvisers. And Sinatra recorded only two Coward songs...
DIED. CHARLIE BYRD, 74, classically trained jazz-guitar virtuoso; of cancer; in Annapolis, Md. His 1962 album Jazz Samba, with saxophonist Stan Getz, popularized bossa nova in North America. Byrd recorded more than 100 albums, and was honored this year by Brazil as a Knight of the Rio Branco...
Though his ability to wrap his voice around a romantic lyric arguably ranked him near Elvis, Sinatra and Lady Day, the pop balladeer (and jazz pianist) Nat King Cole is unfortunately perhaps best remembered today as Natalie's dad. Epstein's insightful new book--best read while listening to Cole's rereleased album The Christmas Song--should remedy things. The biographer sometimes digs too deep into esoterica, spending pages analyzing the lyrics of Straighten Up and Fly Right, for example. But when he recounts the singer's personal struggles, including a shocking 1956 onstage kidnapping attempt by Alabama racists...
...last--a classy Christmas album. Von Otter, the best of all possible mezzo-sopranos, has put together a kaleidoscopically varied program of pop, jazz, classical and folk songs accompanied by an equally diverse instrumental ensemble (accordion, marimba, guitar, synthesizers, a brass quintet--you name it, she's got it). Every number, be it Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, O Come, All Ye Faithful or Benjamin Britten's Corpus Christi Carol, is sung with stylish grace and disarming sincerity. And unlike most classical singers, Von Otter knows how to make a pop tune swing...