Ashley
Locheed (voice); Chris Rottmayer (piano); Chuck Archard (electric bass) Keith
Wilson (drums)
(Recorded in 2011, So in Love is dedicated to the band's drummer Keith Wilson who died in 2014 aged 55.)
Ashley
Locheed, vocalist and bandleader, performs internationally with her quartet,
tours regularly with Michael Bolton and has worked with Engelbert Humperdinck
as well as playing with artists such as Richard Drexler and Allan Vaché.
Chris
Rottmayer, a pianist for Walt Disney World since 1999, is at present a jazz
piano instructor at the University of South Florida.
These two lead on this
very fine, stylish, more-than-competent, album, which gives us mostly standards
including two different renditions of So in Love, but also provides
variety in the form of The Windmills of Your Mind; Paul Simon's Something
So Right and La Vie En Rose.
The
opening So in Love is intimately sung over a Latin beat with a strong
rhythmic bass, in contrast to the same song on the final track, a swing version
with a fuller sound and a lighter bass. Both acceptable but I preferred it
swinging. Agua De Beber has pleasing lyrics which I hadn't noticed
before, maybe because it's often sung in the original language. 'Round
Midnight, feelingly sung, getting across the tension of being unsure in
love. It helped that I was listening at around midnight (we never sleep at
BSH).
I Love Paris ended with a quick chorus
of C'est Ci Bon, a neat touch. The cleverly arranged Summer Wind,
with effective images of cymbals sounding like the wind and the piano flowing
like wind. The Windmills of Your Mind, sung as a slow ballad making it
all the better to enjoy the imagery of the lyrics and Piaf’s La Vie En Rose
over an effectively steady drumbeat rounded off an excellent choice of tunes.
I did
have one reservation... I've come to the conclusion that the
electric bass is not nearly as good for jazz of this nature as the lovely big
wooden double bass. The former is more suited to the contemporary side of jazz
and, on this album, I found it a bit too loud and insistent on some of the
tracks.
The
album is available from September 4 on the Timucua Arts Foundation label. See www.chrisrottmayer.com
Ann Alex
So
in Love; Agua De Beber; 'Round Midnight; Day in Day Out; I Love Paris;
Something So Right (Paul Simon); Summer Wind; Sailing; The Windmills of
Your Mind (Michel Legrand); La Vie En Rose; So in Love (take
two).
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