[Dixielandjazz] Swinging Sunday Brunch in NYC

[Stephen G Barbone]

A great show of American Songbook Tunes.

Cheers,
Steve barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonesttreetjazzband

NY TIMES - SEPT 20 - By STEPHEN HOLDEN

A Swinging, Sophisticated New York

As the jazz pianist Barbara Carroll and her longtime musical partner,  
the bassist Jay Leonhart, happily leapfrogged through a sequence of  
songs about dancing on Sunday afternoon at the Oak Room of the  
Algonquin Hotel, words from Stephen Sondheim’s musical “Sunday in the  
Park With George” came to mind.

Order, composition, balance and harmony — principles that describe a  
Seurat painting — also apply to Ms. Carroll’s serenely confident, far- 
sighted art. Swing — the only missing word from Mr. Sondheim’s list  
that might describe her playing — comes from the jazz lexicon.

Ms. Carroll, 80-something, shows no signs of flagging energy,  
technique or enthusiasm. Her touch is strong and steady; she tosses  
off crunching chords and solid bass lines without any fuss. “Let’s  
Face the Music and Dance,” the third song in the sequence, was lifted  
by a sturdy minor-key vamp. That Irving Berlin standard was preceded  
by “Is There Anything Better Than Dancing?” (from the musical “Nick  
and Nora”) and “Dance Only With Me” (from “Say Darling”), both of  
which she sang in her signature parlando style, supplying just enough  
innuendo to suggest dancing as a prelude to sweeter intimacy.

The performance was the opening salvo of Ms. Carroll’s seventh season  
of Sunday jazz brunch concerts in the Oak Room. The series, whose  
selections change from week to week, is the closest thing to Bobby  
Short’s much-missed seasons at the Café Carlyle. These performers  
don’t simply distill an ideal of Manhattan sophistication over more  
than 50 years; in a sense, they are New York.

Elegant, red-haired and unfailingly gracious, Ms. Carroll is herself a  
finished painting: a delicate, finely boned, beautifully spoken woman  
who is much more resilient than she appears. It is in her ballads that  
she reveals herself as a dreamy musical impressionist with roots deep  
in Ravel and Debussy. A medley of “Autumn in New York” and “Early  
Autumn,” arranged as a semiclassical suite, produced arpeggios of  
tumbling leaves and multicolored foliage.

Singing “A Love Like Ours,” a song first popularized by Barbra  
Streisand, Ms. Carroll emphasized the gravity of the phrase, “When  
love like ours arrives/We guard it with our lives,” whose words (by  
Alan and Marilyn Bergman) are not to be taken lightly.

Ms. Carroll’s surprise guest, Aaron Weinstein, a Chicago-born jazz  
violinist, joined the pair for two numbers. A sensational talent in  
the tradition of Stéphane Grappelli and Joe Venuti, Mr. Weinstein, who  
is in his mid-20s, is an inventive melodic improviser who doesn’t go  
in for flashy gymnastic flourishes. He turned “Just One of Those  
Things” into a mini-marathon of swinging endurance, at the end of  
which you were left a little breathless.


Barbara Carroll continues on Sunday afternoons through Dec. 19 at the  
Algonquin Hotel, Oak Room, 59 West 44th Street, Manhattan; (212)  
419-9331, algonquinhotel.com/oak-room-supper-club.