Playing with Jimmy, Francesca Bertazzo Hart - Michele Francesconi - New Project Orchestra

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Recorded on 11/12/13 March 2022, mixed and mastered in April and May 2022, by Carlo Cantini at Digitube Recording Studio, Mantova, Italy. Despite being one of the greatest American composers of the postwar, Jimmy Van Heusen isn’t as familiar to jazz musicians as some of its most popular tracks are. The enchanting melodies of It Could Happen to You and Like Someone in Love, the complex chord progressions of Darn That Dream and Here’s That Rainy Day, the subtle grace of But Beautiful have been interpreted hundreds of times and still are today. Van Heusen wrote more than a thousand songs in thirty years and fifty of them have been included in many Real Books. If one doesn’t take into account a brief collaboration with lyricist Eddie DeLange, his career can be divided into two stages: the first one where he worked with Johnny Burke, the second one with Sammy Cahn. It’s no coincidence that, out of the thirteen songs in the album, five were written by Cahn, four by Burke, one each by DeLange and Johnny Mercer, while two of them are original tributes by Francesca Bertazzo Hart to the composer from Syracuse. If one thinks about Songbook, the legendary Ella Fitzgerald comes straight to mind as she paid tribute to nine famed authors with as many albums in the course of her career – from Gershwin to Kern, from Porter to Jobim. Nevertheless, Van Heusen is not on that list: «Playing with Jimmy» fills the gap and impresses from the very first listen for its charming, refined beauty. The third album by the Venetian singer signed to Caligola outdoes the two, excellent previous ones (in «The Teaneck Session», from 2015, George Cables is at the piano) because of the wonderful arrangements by Bertazzo herself and pianist Michele Francesconi, the main collaborator on the project. It is orchestral music enhanced by the excellent woodwinds (five instruments, something rather unusual for a jazz vocal album) by New Project Orchestra, which is backed up by Beppe Pilotto on double bass and the “special guest” Mauro Beggio on drums.

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