Moaning is kept to a minimum where this slice of soul searching and dancing to the music of time are concerned.
Ode to the Road from singer pianist Dena DeRose also with Wind and Wilson we played to death a few years ago.
It came out during the first dread Lockdown year when the freedom to go to gigs was denied and you realised how much you missed jazz in the clubs – DeRose on that album was a comfort.
Looks like lightning has struck twice. But familiarity is even more the name of the Rose given the presence of standards like ‘Autumn in New York’ and ‘Stairway to the Stars.’
The treatment of ‘Only Trust Your Heart’ the Benny Carter and Sammy Cahn song introduced to the canon by Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto in the 1960s and covered in recent years by the Duchess, Stacey Kent, is better. DeRose is a completely different kind of singer to the spookily whispery Gilberto and isn’t at all as girl next door as Stacey.
Born in Binghamton, New York in 1966, DeRose began in the 1990s under her own steam on Introducing Dena DeRose.
While there’s trombone in the mix here it’s not a distraction but really trio and vocals are where the main action hovers and stirs. Among the material there’s the unveiling for the first time of DeRose song ‘Hold Fast to Your Dreams’ based on the poem ‘Dreams’ by Langston Hughes. It’s a fascinatingly absorbing composition begun by solo bass lines of Wind’s followed by willowy piano lines from DeRose and tender conversational to-ing and fro-ing between piano and bass with gentle drumming from Matt Wilson.
As for the vocal we couldn’t help but think of the sound of Patricia Barber when DeRose sings this.
We love that Barber-esque darkness cut and blown dry on a classic of the Chicagoan’s like ‘White World’. But DeRose is far more retro on this latest album than anything of Barber’s at least since her Cole Porter treatments years ago.
The soppiness of the Edmund Anderson words set to the melody of ‘Lotus Blossom’ on ‘Thank You For Everything’ is nicely gauged by DeRose who really is a classic jazz club kind of singer in her intimacy and poise and knows how to add revivifying flair and a dash of sweet perfume to the vintage purview.
If you mope and groan something’s got to give
For if dreams die
Langston Hughes
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Also of note is the treatment of ‘Maybe September’ – again we start rooting around in our Tony Bennett sonic sock drawer for a route back to the song. But really however it’s Shirley Horn time that really matters and the singer beloved of Miles Davis did the Ray Evans, Jay Livingston and Percy Faith ballad so wonderfully on her late life classic May the Music Never End.
DeRose who is heavily influenced by Horn did an album dedicated to her called We Won’t Forget You does the song justice too. It’s worth the price of the album alone. At this juncture the deft modulations in DeRose’s piano solo amounts to yet another winner. Make it a rendezvous.
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Chill and still conjure thoughts that it’s a new dawn, a new day, a new life for me. And I’m feeling good.
