[Dixielandjazz] M0M , SON & AMERICAN SONGBOOK AT THE ALGONQUIN

[Steve barbone]

Bill Charlap and his Mom, Sandy Stewart are one of the really bright spots
in American Songbook OKOM. They've got an album out which is wonderful.
Better yet, if you are in NYC, go see them. Who knows, you might also see
Tony Bennett, Diana Krall, Barbara Carroll or Elvis Costello alongside you
in the audience.

Cheers,
Steve

Between the Notes, Melody Lingers - STEPHEN HOLDEN - Nov 10, 2005 - NY TIMES

Stillness is a quality rarely heard in popular music. Not to be confused
with silence, it produces silence. When during a pause between phrases, the
collective breath of an audience is suspended in the thrall of musicality so
concentrated that the tiniest disruption would be an imposition, stillness
reigns. 

That's the quality that the pianist Bill Charlap and his mother, the singer
Sandy Stewart, conjured at Tuesday's opening night show of their two-week
engagement at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel. It's their third
appearance at the club and follows the late-September release of their first
album together, "Love Is Here to Stay" (Blue Note), a collection of classic
ballads that will reward the attentive listener with an experience of
stillness.

Mr. Charlap and Ms. Stewart are by nature minimalists for whom quietude and
restraint are essential elements of expression. Both define themselves as
much by what they leave out as by what they put in. Both value melody as
opposed to tunefulness.

Mr. Charlap personifies the accompanist as an equal partner in the
construction of musical dialogues in which each chord is perfectly chosen to
be both a comment on the moment before and a musical springboard for the
next phrase. Those chords are plain, but slightly skewed, evocative but
never overripe. Every note has its own precise dynamic role, its duration
calculated to the millisecond. His wonderful skipping exits from songs
supply glistening punctuation.

Ms. Stewart's warm, womanly contralto, with its slightly frayed edges, is a
deeply soothing instrument that conveys equal measures of comfort and
wistfulness. On Tuesday she drew out "The Man I Love," "Just One of Those
Things," "Remind Me" and "Someone to Watch Over Me" into long humming
meditations, raising her voice only once, during the Johnny Mandel-Alan and
Marilyn Bergman song "Where Do You Start?"

In his piano solo segment, Mr. Charlap followed a bright, upbeat "Blue Room"
with a version of "It's All Right With Me," in which rapid-fire piano riffs
exploded out of the lean, springy arrangement, only to be snatched back and
bottled up until the pressure produced another explosion. The performance
brought gasps from an audience that included Tony Bennett, Elvis Costello,
Diana Krall and Barbara Carroll.

Sensing how special the evening was, Ms. Stewart joked: "Just stay here for
the rest of the run. I'll cook."