Listening

Signature, Trail of Sounds by Kennedy Warns As part of its multimillion millennium outlay, the Canadian government not only connected up the last portions of the epic 16,000 km Trans Canada walking trail but also commissioned the country’s most famous name in jazz, Oscar Peterson, to compose a suite to commemorate the achievement. The result, Trail of Dreams, a joint effort between Peterson’s quartet and the string ensemble of Michel Legrand (a touch of political correctness here, including the Frenchman?) is a set of 12 “soundscapes” that seek to capture the breadth of Canadiana, geographical and cultural. There are no sharp edges here, just bright, engaging settings that range from Celtic rhythms to French fiddling to the soaring patriotism of “Anthem to a New Land” to the melancholy mood of “Morning in Newfoundland,’ conjuring up sea mist at dawn. The string backings never intrude, giving 75-year-old Peterson on piano and his guitarist Ulf Wakenius plenty of space to lead the melodic charge Listening to this polished performance (issued on the Telarc label) I couldn’t help wondering whether our own government will be so magnanimous when Te Araroa, the local north-south version of the Trans Canada Trail, is complete. Is she the soprano answer to Andrea Bocelli? Quite possibly, for Filippa Giordano has the looks and the voice to take the pop/opera crossover community by storm In her debut album, Filippa Giordano, released on the classical Erata label, she mixes classical arias with contemporary songs, the latter including the beautiful Ennio Morricone-Roger Waters “Lost Boys Calling.” While no one will ever touch Maria Callas’ renditions of “Cast Diva,” Giordano’s two versions (one extended.) have considerable emotional clout. This is no haughty diva locked into an icy vocal precision. Her breathy intimacy sends a shiver up the spine. Seven of the 11 tracks are classical, sung in Italian-(among them the utterly lovely “O Mio Babbino Caro” from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi) and the rest are in English. The combination feels a little strange, but the singing is divine. For stunning vocals from a local, seek out a copy of In a Blue Vein from Caitlin Smith and The Fondue Set. Smith’s is a well known name in jazz circles, and the trio can usually be heard on a Sunday afternoon at Iguacu in Parnell. I heard her on a drizzly Auckland Guy Fawkes night at Kentus Maximus in Grey Lynn, where she lit up the night with vocal pyrotechnics. The spontaneity and playfulness of her live performances are well captured on this album, in which six of 11 tracks are recorded live. The material spans Cole Porter, Carole King, Gershwin, Billie Holliday and more. Her version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” is a long, long way from Kansas, and “Witchita Lineman,” the album’s closing number, is high-voltage indeed. Staying squarely on the sunny side of the jazz street is the John Pizzarelli Trio, whose latest recording, Let There Be Love (Telarc) is as swoony and croony as a romantic jazz album gets. This is candlelight and dinner-for-two music, impeccably crafted by Pizzarelli (vocals and hollow-body seven-string guitar) and his mellow men: Ray Kennedy (piano’, Martin Pizzarelli (bass) and guests on saxophone, clarinet and accordion—not to mention drummer-without-a-kit Tony Tedesco, who plays brushes on a phone book. “Stomping at the Savoy,” “I’m Putting all my Eggs in One Basket” and “These Foolish Things” are among the standards which get the smooth Pizzarelli treatment on an album that sets out to be “a spontaneous expression of what it feels like to be in love.” It would be an unusually saccharine romance that felt like this every day, but for those moonlit sum¬mer nights when love is in the air, Pizzarelli is definitely the man to provide the accompaniment. A bigger mission and a harsher message are to be found in Don Henley’s, new album, Inside Job (Warner). The prophetic voice of the man who gave us ‘The Last Resort” (check the pungent ver¬sion on the Eagles’ Hell Freeze* Cher album) is still crying in the wilderness—on behalf of the wilderness— in “Goodbye to a River,” a bitter lament over wild places sacrificed to corporate greed. Henley’s pessimism is not limited to environmental concerns. Inside Job takes a jab at narcissism (“Is it a sign of the times, or is it just your callous heart? How did you get so disconnected?”), business ethics (“We got the short-term gain, the long term mess, We got the suffocating quarterly consciousness”;,. the whole materialistic nine yards. But tempering the anger and the irony are some tender reflections on family, home, a love that lasts and a belief in some¬thing bigger than yourself. The 50-year-old Henley is covering similar ground to that which Neil Young covers in Silver and Gold, and songs such as “My Thanksgiving,” ‘Taking You Home” and “Annabel” (a father’s love for his daughter, and as beautiful as anything he’s ever written) are strong, truthful and refreshing. “I got a telegram from the god of simple things,” he writes, and an older, wiser Henley is ready to turn his back on “Miss Ghost”—the allure of the one-night stand—and to “bite the bullet and take the vow.” If you’re tired of the vapid sameness of so much that goes for lyrics these days, treat yourself to the poetry and punch of one of the truly influential artists of our times.