Monday Music: A Child Is Born (Tony Bennett and Bill Evans)

 I'm listening to the legendary Tony Bennett with the remarkable Bill Evans 
at the piano and looking ahead to the Feast of the Epiphany.

 

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Monday Music: Some Other Time (Tony Bennett & Bill Evans)

The legendary Tony Bennett recently announced his retirement from performing at the age of 95. His career has spanned eight decades. "Some Other Time" was recorded in 1975 with jazz pianist Bill Evans. It is from The Tony Bennett and Bill Evans Album in which the two musicians collaborated on nine songs to produce a rich smooth jazz sound. Bennett is known for interpreting the Great American Songbook, but this collaboration reveals a musical river that runs deeper in the singer than some fans might have realized.

 

"Some Other Time" was composed by Leonard Bernstein, with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green from the 1944 musical On the Town.

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Monday Music: Love Is Here to Stay (Tony Bennett, Diana Krall)

From the YouTube site: "An unprecedented union of the two greatest living jazz singers, ‘Love Is Here To Stay’ celebrates Gershwin’s 120th anniversary with a new recording of timeless American popular standards and jazz repertoire."

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A Musical Interlude: Just the Two of Us (Grover Washington, Jr.)

Quite a musical ensemble here: Grover Washington Jr. on saxophone, Bill Withers on vocals, Marcus Miller on bass, Steve Gadd on drums, and Richard Tee on the Fender Rhodes keyboard. 

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Foot Soldiers (Eric Essix)

Homegrown jazz guitarist Eric Essix performed at local jazz hall Perfect Note in the Birmingham suburb of Hoover over the weekend (August 12-13) Born in Birmingham in 1959, Essix's grandfather began teaching him guitar at age ten and parlayed those lessons into developing his own chops to the point that he was performing in high school talent shows. In 2010 he was offered a position at the groundbreaking, state of the art Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center on the campus of the University of Alabama Birmingham, eventually being named Director of Programming, and in 2013 he was named the school’s “Artist in Residence”. (Taken from Magic City Radar Blog Magazine)

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