[Dixielandjazz] A parallel perhaps?

[Stephen Barbone]

Jerry & List Mates:

Well, I didn't want to disrespect her but since you asked, it was a
review of Jane Monheit in her current NYC performance. I figure it is
tough enough to make a living in music without being trashed by a
critic. Easier by far to bitch about something someone else did, than it
is to do something creative oneself.

Full review follows your note. The third paragraph is the killer.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

Jazzjerry at aol.com wrote:

>    Steve,
>
> Please tell those of us without access to your daily paper who this
> wonderful
> singer is! It's not fair to keep us all in suspense.

June 18, 2004

MUSIC REVIEW | JANE MONHEIT

Haunting Is Her Specialty

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

       At 26, the pop-jazz singer Jane Monheit may still be too young to
have her name identified with one song above all others. But that could
change. If she continues to cry out the 1948 ballad "Haunted Heart," by
Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz, with the fervor she brought to her
rendition at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel on Wednesday evening,
it could become her signature. She has already recorded it; "Haunted
Heart," enhanced with a gorgeous arrangement by Alan Broadbent, is the
standout cut on her last album, "In the Sun" (N-Coded Music).

Ms. Monheit's voice, which glides over long-lined phrases with a
pulsating richness edged with a girlish nasality, remains her primary
resource as she veers between traditional pop and jazz in a career that
has been oversold as the latter. The other memorable performance in her
new show, "You and the Night and the
Music," devoted mostly to Schwartz-composed standards (with side trips
into Cole Porter and Vernon Duke) is another ballad about a haunting.
Singing "I See Your Face Before Me," from the 1937 musical "Between the
Devil," Ms. Monheit throws herself into it with the emotional abandon of
a teenager obsessing over a lost love.

It is when Ms. Monheit fails to connect with her material that her
limitations begin to irritate. She has an unfortunate habit of appending
formulaic jazzy codas to songs and of decorating phrases with twirling
embellishments that amount to little more than empty decoration. And her
twittery patter is schoolgirlish in its
naivete. During the show, which plays through June 26 at the Oak Room
(59 West 44th Street), her immaturity is underscored by a dull quartet
(Mike Kanan on piano, Miles Okazaki on guitar, Orlando LeFleming on bass
and Rick Montalbano on drums) whose loungy, Latin-flavored arrangements
offer little color and inventiveness.