Lee Lessack - In Good Company

Styles: Jazz, Vocal
Year: 2005
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 74:21
Size: 170,9 MB
Art: Front

(4:35)  1. Lee Lessack With Nita Whitaker - The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
(3:50)  2. Lee Lessack With Susan Egan - The Look Of Love
(3:09)  3. Lee Lessack With Jon Philip Alman - Sweet Mystery
(4:39)  4. Lee Lessack With  Mary Jo Mundy - Never Saw Blue Like That
(4:56)  5. Lee Lessack With  Brian Lane Green - Opens Arms
(6:15)  6. Lee Lessack With Ann Hampton Callaway - Bring Back Romance
(3:50)  7. Lee Lessack With Johnny Rodgers - Here's To You
(5:13)  8. Lee Lessack With Joanne O'Brien - Summer Wine
(4:54)  9. Lee Lessack With Franc D'Ambrosio - Vincero Perdero
(4:54) 10. Lee Lessack With Maureen McGovern - If You Go Away
(4:05) 11. Lee Lessack With Stephen Schwartz - For Good
(3:15) 12. Lee Lessack With Susan Werner - Blue Guitar
(3:58) 13. Lee Lessack With David Burnham - Let It Be Me
(3:31) 14. Lee Lessack With Amanda McBroom - The Rose
(4:42) 15. Lee Lessack With Ken Page - Vincent
(3:54) 16. Lee Lessack With Stacy Sullivan - Stay the Night
(4:34) 17. Lee Lessack With Michael Feinstein - May I Suggest

No one is working harder than Lee Lessack to keep the increasingly fragile art of cabaret singing on life support. To date, he has released more than 100 discs by some 70 artists (including himself) on his L.A.-based LML label. But never before has Lessack launched so overt an assault as with this 17-track collection that pairs him with a brigade of the genre's top singers and players. The results are uniformly lovely, especially when Lessack joins forces with Susan Egan on "The Look of Love," Maureen McGovern on "If You Go Away," David Burnham on a slow-roasted "Let It Be Me" and composer Stephen Schwartz on the magical "For Good" from his score for Broadway's Tony-winning Wicked.

Trouble is, despite the accuracy of its title, In Good Company lacks cabaret's most essential spice-variety. The all-ballad assortment is like a damask table runner: beautiful and tasteful, but ultimately just passively decorative. The one notable-indeed, soaring-exception is his teaming with keyboardist Johnny Rodgers (who coproduced the album with Lessack and whose band backs each track) on the Rodgers-penned "Here's to You" that pays superlative homage to Simon and Garfunkel. ~ Christopher Loudon  http://jazztimes.com/articles/16099-in-good-company-lee-lessack

Personnel: Lee Lessack (vocals); David Burnham , Franc d'Ambrosio, Joanne O'Brien, Ken Page, Michael Feinstein, Amanda McBroom, Nita Whitaker, Ann Hampton Callaway, Stacy Sullivan, Stephen Schwartz, Susan Egan, Susan Werner, Maureen McGovern, Jon Philip Alman, Mary Jo Mundy, Johnny Rodgers, Brian Lane Green (vocals); Joe Ravo (guitar); Una Tone (violin); Wolfram Koessel (cello); John F. Rodgers (piano, organ); Danny Colfax Mallon (drums); Tom Harrell (trumpet, flugelhorn).

In Good Company

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Susan Werner - Classics

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 35:33
Size: 81.4 MB
Styles: Piano jazz, Easy listening
Year: 2009
Art: Front

[0:31] 1. Prelude
[4:43] 2. A Hazy Shade Of Winter
[3:13] 3. Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)
[2:13] 4. The Wind
[4:20] 5. Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood
[2:19] 6. Lonely People
[3:36] 7. Turn Turn Turn
[3:40] 8. All In Love Is Fair
[3:10] 9. Maybe I'm Amazed
[4:32] 10. Waiting In Vain
[3:10] 11. I Just Wasn't Made For These Times

Over the course of her colorful career, singer songwriter Susan Werner has cultivated a reputation as a daring and innovative songwriter with a killer live show. She boldly endeavors to weave old with new to create altogether new genres of music when existing ones do not suit her muse, and she regularly keeps audiences guessing and laughing simultaneously. Most of her work infuses traditional music styles and methods with her unmistakable contemporary worldview, constantly challenging listeners to experience music from a fresh and unexpected perspective. Susan Werner's Classics asks no less of her distinguished audience or herself.

With Classics, Werner delivers entirely new string arrangements of mainstream popular songs by top songwriters from a ''classical'' pop era - the sixties and seventies. Drawing on her unique training as a classical vocalist (she has a master's degree in music history and voice performance), and the diverse talents of esteemed Boston Symphony and Pops players, Classics sets a mood that highlights elegance and sophistication previously overlooked in the first lives of songs like Paul Simon's A Hazy Shade of Winter, Marvin Gaye's Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology), Paul McCartney's Maybe I'm Amazed and America's Lonely People.

Classics

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