Fred Hersch, Esperanza Spalding – Alive At The Village Vanguard - 2023 Modern Jazz - Black Vinyl - Sealed LP

9:38

 

 

 

 

''Alive at the Village Vanguard offers proof from the first notes of "But Not For Me," a song so thoroughly dissected by jazz singers and instrumentalists that it should have little left to reveal. By choosing this chestnut, and by animating it with their soaring, dancing musical conversation, Hersch and Spalding set a challenge for themselves and vault over it. With imaginative accompaniment from Hersch, spalding delivers it without sentimentality. But how to put across Ira Gershwin's now-doubly archaic lyrical archaisms ("Heigh-ho, alas and also lack-a-day") with a straight face? Her answer: by not keeping a straight face. Rather, spalding pokes gentle, self-deprecating fun at them in the first of many humorous anecdotes, riffs and asides. Having dispensed with that, she goes on to deliver a dazzling improvisation on the well-worn material before passing the baton to Hersch.

 

"Some Other Time," is not the familiar Bernstein composition, but a Frank Sinatra vehicle by Cahn and Styne from a forgotten 1944 movie. Hersch loves the tune (he recorded it on his 2003 Palmetto debut Live at the Village Vanguard) and he lays out a velvet drape of rhapsodic poetry for spalding to wrap herself in.'' (AllAboutJazz)