Sinne Eeg has a fine voice, a bluesier version of English singer Claire Martin perhaps, and certainly bluesy with it here among other angles along with fellow Dane pianist Jacob Christoffersen.
They have been working together for many years. Interestingly this was recorded a long way from home live in Japan at a venue called Shikiori.
Christoferssen alternates between piano and Fender Rhodes and also contributes some additional vocals. I’m a fan of Belgian pianist Jef Neve especially when he worked with American singer José James. And Christoferssen’s touch makes me thing of Neve a bit and the way such empathy and hugely jazz informed piano artistry can wrap itself around the vocals like a strand of silk, a cloth of gold.
There is some strong to-ing and fro-ing between the duo, it’s not one way traffic in terms of accompaniment that you sense on some jazz records when the pianist’s role is strictly that of an amenuensis or for shadow play.
The venue the two recorded this album in according to Stunt on its Bandcamp page is a 150-year-old house turned concert venue. Songs include typical fare on many jazz vocals inclined records but that doesn’t diminish the strength of what the duo achieve. In some ways having Billy Strayhorn (a satisfying ‘Lush Life’) and a Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim classic (even better in the duo’s hands – a sumptuously slow ‘Maria’) material is a comfort. I was not so sure about including even one Annie Lennox song on paper baldly beforehand. However, how wrong was that snap opinion because the choice of ‘Cold’ from the hit maker’s 1990s Diva album later covered by Curtis Stigers proves a good one the way Eeg approaches it.
The label says there is no programming and no edits. Wow. A lack of gloss and absence of studio toys or gimmickry are instead positives. What the duo do isn’t performative at all in the sense of thinking they have to be the very model of a night club singer and a playing-the-role club pianist like it’s a period piece preserved in aspic.
Far from it. Best thing? Oh, there is a choice. First and foremost it is easily the vibrant wonderfully enunciated version of Bill Loughborough and David Wheat’s ‘Better Than Anything’ which goes back to Irene Kral with the Junior Mance Trio in 1963 that appeals. The witty song was later covered by Al Jarreau, Tuck and Patti deliciously and Claire Martin herself in the 1990s on The Waiting Game.
The standards do take prominence over the originals it’s true with the possible exception of the lovely Eeg original ‘Don’t Be So Blue’ that deserves a lot of frequent replay as does the lullaby quality found on Christoffersen’s ‘Soba’. And another highlight is the deft way the pair elaborate on the Gershwins’ ‘But Not For Me’. Glad I found this. Incredible really how easy it is to not know or even if you do pick up a few notes be blithely oblivious instead distracted by gaudier TikTokery.
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