Glendalys Sosa, vocals; Joe Sherman, clarinet and saxophone; John Austria, piano
Hmm, how best to describe this? It was sort of like the background music you might hear at a wedding reception. It wasn’t fine music making but it was fun music making. Ms. Sosa had a pleasant enough voice. Surprisingly, the clarinet and saxophone almost overpowered the performance space (an auditorium at the Bronx Library Center). Mr. Austria provided the perfect amount of support—at one point, I realized that he was playing really well but it was so unobtrusive that it didn’t register as really good playing.
There was no printed program. The songs were so recognizable, though, that I think I jotted them all down. In order, we heard All of Me, You Make Me Feel So Young, and That Old Feeling, all with piano, vocals, and sax. With a switch to clarinet, we heard I’ll Never Smile Again and You Do Something to Me before switching back to the sax for I’ve Got You Under My Skin, You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To, and You’d Be So Easy to Love, as a mini-Cole Porter set.
In some ways, this program was a labor of love on the part of Mr. Sherman, as he was the source of all of the Sinatra memorabilia (several record sleeves) and related back stories to some of the songs. From Sinatra’s Come Dance with Me LP, we heard a jazzed up version of I Could Have Danced All Night, with a phrase of Come Dance with Me inserted in the middle.
In a Count Basie arrangement, we heard Fly Me to the Moon. And along the way, we heard The Days of Wine and Roses and The Summer Wind, the latter sung by Mr. Sherman with Ms. Sosa as his ‘doo-be-doo-be-doo’ backup singer. Next up was a Billy May arrangement of Come Fly with Me, followed by a Jimmy Van Heusen/Sammy Cahn ballad All the Way.
Rounding out the afternoon were Witchcraft and Young at Heart. The very appreciative audience of about fifty people also heard They Can’t Take That Away from Me as a well deserved encore. A fun afternoon in the Bronx.
ConcertMeister
No comments:
Post a Comment