If I ever go to Chicago (sorry but I can't take you) my first stop will be at Le Piano on 6970 N. Glenwood Avenue and, if it's on a Saturday night, I'll hang around for the Afterglow set where Petra and Dennis hold down an ongoing residency from 11:00pm to 1:00am.
On the other hand, if I don't make it to O'Hare then all will not be lost. I'll have this album to listen to and luxuriate in the magic of their music.
Just as Ella and Ellis Larkins did when they set the benchmark with their 10" Decca album - Ella Sings Gershwin - over 70 years ago Petra and Dennis hit that same level. The empathy is there. The piano setting the mood, the voice picking up the baton and strolling with it.
Like all great singers, Petra puts her own interpretation of the lyric into a song. Not too far removed, just enough to make it her own.
The material is a mix of songbook standards and contemporary pops. Not covers but classics approached from a different angle and, as a bonus, the title track, From me to You, is not the Lennon & McCartney tune of the same name but a superior composition by Chicago pianist the late Bob Dogan.
You Better go Now was originally, a full on seduction song recorded back in the 1950s by Jeri Southern. Here the mood is the same but the vocal inflection more subtle yet no less meaningful. It's the final track but I'm not going anywhere other than back to the beginning, Irving Berlin's I Got Lost in His Arms. Rodgers & Hart are next up with the first of two compositions: I Wish I Were in Love Again. That line, 'the conversation with the flying plates' and all those multiple rhymes are sung as if she'd been there although naturally I hope that she hasn't. Rodgers & Hart also provided the whimsical Everything I've Got and Cole Porter chipped in with Too Darn Hot.
These are but a few of the twelve tracks. Each and every one beautifully sung and played so that to single one as being above the rest is nigh impossible.
From me to You is the second album by the duo that I've had the pleasure of reviewing and it will sit nicely on the shelf alongside three of her other albums - none of which will be gathering dust.* Lance
*Lonely Girl - I Remember Julie (w. Andy Brown).
*Lessons Lyrical (w. Andy Brown).
*Because We're Night People (w. Dennis Luxion).
I Got Lost in His Arms; I Wish I Were in Love Again; Take me in Your Arms; Help me Make it Through the Night; Whatever Lola Wants; Nothing; Rainy Days and Mondays; Too Darn Hot; From me to You; The Windmills of Your Mind; Everything I've Got; Last Tango in Paris; You Better go Now
No comments :
Post a Comment