LINCOLN CENTER

Appel Room
The Music of Gershwin - Michael Feinstein

"Michael Feinstein celebrates Gershwin's deep connection to jazz, both in his personal roots and influences. Gershwin was a formidable stride pianist, whose first-hand gurus were Lucky Roberts and James P. Johnson, and through his audacious themes and ingenious chord sequences, thousands of musicians have used Gershwin's work as a jumping off point for classic improvisations."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miIg9rmM5Vs

Still the Gershwins, but Dig That Pace

Michael Feinstein and Company Celebrate Vintage Jazz

By STEPHEN HOLDENAPRIL 25, 2014

        

Michael Feinstein singing in "The Music of George Gershwin."

Michael Feinstein has been preaching the gospel according to George and Ira Gershwin for so many years that you might think he would run out of things to say or ways to present their work. But “The Music of George Gershwin,” the season-opening concert of his jazz and popular song series at the Appel Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center on Wednesday evening, was a gusher in which the great vintage-jazz band Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks and three guest singers examined the Gershwins’ legacy through a focused nostalgic lens.

As a pop music archivist, Mr. Giordano has amassed one of the world’s largest collections of vintage orchestral arrangements (some 60,000), which he and his band delivered with a lighthearted enthusiasm matched by their precision. As a bandleader, Mr. Giordano, who plays bass, bass tuba and bass saxophone, takes standards back to their roots and infuses them with a quick-stepping effervescence that strips away any tendencies toward ceremonial grandiosity.

Many, though not all, of the selections heard on Wednesday used vintage arrangements that picked up the pace of songs that too often are given a solemn, monumental treatment. A likable curiosity was an old arrangement of part of “Rhapsody in Blue,” recast as a fox trot.

The singers — Catherine Russell, Carole J. Bufford and Allan Harris — applied their personal stamps to songs both famous and obscure. Mr. Feinstein’s splashy pianism and creamy voice provided a core of romanticism.

Ms. Russell’s peppy “The Man I Love” brought to mind a sound that, in her words, conjured “a family sitting around a radio.” Mr. Harris, whom Mr. Feinstein introduced as the heir to Nat King Cole, sang a warm, friendly “They Can’t Take That Away From Me.” Ms. Bufford, a latter-day Ethel Merman, delivered a sensational, hard-boiled “Sam and Delilah,” a song that Merman introduced in “Girl Crazy.”

When the musicians gathered for the finale, “Our Love Is Here to Stay,” the sentiments of the infrequently performed opening verse sounded as fresh as if the song had been written last week:

The more I read the papers

the less I comprehend

the world and all its capers

and how it all will end.