Music on the Web (UK)

Webmaster: Len Mullenger

[ Jazz index ] [Nostalgia index]  [ Classical MusicWeb ] [ Gerard Hoffnung ]

BUY NOW Crotchet

Tierney Sutton Dancing In the Dark TELARC SACD-63592

1. What’ll I Do
2. Only the Lonely
3. I’ll Be Around
4. All the Way
5. I Think of You
6. Where or When
7. Without A Song
8. I Could Have Told You
9. Emily
10. Last Night when We Were Young
11. Fly Me to the Moon
12. Last Dance/Dancing In the Dark

Tierney Sutton-Vocals
Christian Jacob - Piano
Trey Henry - Bass
Ray Brinker - Drums
Orchestra conducted by Christian Jacob

This Telarc CD offers two versions on one album, a hybrid multi channel version for people who own a 5 channel playback system and another version for ordinary CD players. If the sound on the 5 channel version is of the quality of the ordinary version, and I’m sure it is, the sound of the sophisticated version must hit a new high in Hi-Fi!

Tierney Sutton is the personification of quality singers, her intonation is perfection, her diction the ultimate in clarity and she has that wonderful sense of timing that only the best of jazz singers are capable of. Equally she has selected her musical associates well, the backings are all beautifully performed by expert musicians.

The choice of material is interesting, the cover says that the inspiration for the album is the music of Frank Sinatra. The album contains few of the Sinatra blockbusters, although I’m sure he sang all of these songs at sometime. The sleeve note confirms that he was the inspiration due to his ability to make a song his own, Tierney Sutton also has this quality and she delivers a very personal version of each of these beautiful songs.

Tierney and her associates are people in search of musical perfection and there is no doubt that they deliver it here. I strongly recommend the album to everyone as a perfect example of how by hard work, it is possible to refine a performance, so that what in some cases is a fairly ordinary song, can be transformed into something very special.

The only danger with this approach is that jazz is essentially a spontaneous music and if you polish it too much, it looses something. This has not happened here, but I would like to think that Tierney occasionally chances her arm in the way that Ella, Sarah and Billie Holiday did, by performing with a trio she has not worked with before and just finding out what happens! Spontaneity has a very important part to play in the jazz performance.

Don Mather

Return to Index