Bringing together the US pianist Michael Kanan, the veteran Argentinian double bassist Horacio Fumero and the Catalan drummer Guillem Arnedo, The Sweetest Sounds was recorded in La Garriga near Barcelona.
Middle of the road, swinging and pretty joyful at that, particularly if the idiom is your natural listening terrain, Kanan’s touch is measured and poised.
Kanan above accompanying Jimmy Scott in Tokyo in 2000 on ‘I Cried for You’
His CV includes earning his dues with Jimmy Scott and as the long-term musical director for Jane Monheit.
Kanan accompanies the great jazz and show singer Jane Monheit in the video above at a studio in Seattle with the bassist Neal Miner and Jane’s husband drummer Rick Montalbano.
“Iscoca” Fumero toured with sax legend Gato Barbieri in the 1970s before spending nearly two decades with Spain’s legendary pianist Tete Montoliu. He played charango on Latino America in the 1970s.
Arnedo keeps stately time and contributes ‘Best Buddy’ a tune you will also find on the Bartha Arnedo Quartet album It’s About Time (above) which on that version was arranged with a trumpet part to it.
If the moon turns green
Bernie Hanighen
And rivers began to flow upstream
This is all a crazy dream: I wouldn’t be surprised
Anything can happen
If you can fall in love with me
There’s a moody, acoustic reimagining of Yip Harburg’s ‘Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?’ and also here are Tommy Dorsey’s classic ‘I’ll Never Smile Again’ and Bernie Hanighen and Paul Cates’ 1930s song ‘If the Moon Turns Green’ that Billie Holiday, Carmen McRae and Anita O’Day all delivered versions of.
The album moves gracefully from the breezy swing of Clara Edwards’ 1930 song ‘With the Wind and the Rain in Your Hair’ to the vulnerability of Leonard Bernstein’s ‘Lonely Town’. Alan Broadbent did a buoyant version of the ‘Wind and Rain’ song in recent years and to some extent Kanan compares quite well stylistically with Broadbent’s take on tghe tune although it’s not quite as bright and engaged as his in this reading.
But the title track, Richard Rodgers’ ‘The Sweetest Sounds’, certainly rewards the task of seeking out the record. Performed by Diahann Carroll & Richard Kiley in the early 1960s, recent treatments within the last 15 years have included pianist Connie Han’s on her album The Richard Rodgers Songbook back in 2015. Han’s approach is far more demonstrative than Kanan’s. You don’t come to this album for brash overstatement at all! The originals get overshadowed a bit – certainly you arrive at the album which is something of a period piece for the great choice of standards and the thoughtful approach most of all.
Leave a comment