[Dixielandjazz] Dave Frishberg back in New York City at The Oak Room.

[Stephen G Barbone]

Don't miss Dave's & Jessica's show if you are around NYC between now  
and April 2.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

Bernie, Dorothy and That Interior Voice

NY TIMES - March 22, 2011 - By STEPHEN HOLDEN


Some might call the pesky inner voice that nags us to do the right  
thing a conscience, others a guardian angel. In the language of Dave  
Frishberg, the great jazz songwriter, who is playing a rare engagement  
at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel with the singer Jessica  
Molaskey, it is the singular sense of self invoked in “Listen Here,”  
his final number in the show.

Accompanying himself on piano and singing in the dry, avuncular voice  
of a dedicated teacher imparting his wisdom to a fidgety class, Mr.  
Frishberg last week delivered it as offhand scripture. “You can run,  
you can hide, oh but sometime, someplace, we each of us winds up face  
to face with that little voice inside,” the song declares.

That depth of insight distilled in extremely polished phrases is what  
Mr. Frishberg’s best songs offer. Another is “Heart’s Desire,” which  
Ms. Molaskey performed. Sung to a child, the song, with a wistful  
chromatic tune by Alan Broadbent, urges the youngster to pursue “your  
special dream” but warns of the risks: “If you seek your heart’s  
desire, your heart may break.”

The show, “Do You Miss New York?,” includes many of Mr. Frishberg’s  
standards, among them “My Attorney Bernie,” sung with mischievous glee  
by Ms. Molaskey, who implicates the narrator as much as her sleazy  
lawyer in the perpetration of legal skullduggery. The latest update of  
the sly “I’m Hip” (music by Bob Dorough), the ultimate put-down of  
poseurs everywhere, dropped the name Jamie Cullum as a dubious hip  
signifier.

Mr. Frishberg’s pianism, with its knotty chords and staccato phrases,  
was as spiky and emphatic as his personality. Lest we forget, his  
playing reminds us that these are jazz songs in an early ’60s  
tradition; their musical and lyrical diction has a high-strung nervous  
energy. Ms. Molaskey is as sympathetic an interpreter of his work as  
Blossom Dearie, with whom he used to perform.

Two recent songs, “Will You Die?” and “Excuse Me for Living,” come  
from “The New Yorkers,” a “semi-musical” (as Mr. Frishberg describes  
it) about the Algonquin Round Table; they focus on the self- 
destructive behavior of Dorothy Parker, who was always threatening  
suicide. “Excuse Me for Living” is Parker’s scathing retort to voyeurs  
poking into her private life.

In the pop and jazz sphere, the level of craftsmanship in Mr.  
Frishberg’s songs is equaled only by that of Stephen Sondheim. Every  
phrase is chiseled, each word sealed into place, the better to allow  
that “little voice that whispers crystal clear” to have its say.


“Do You Miss New York?” continues through April 2 at the Oak Room of  
the Algonquin Hotel, 59 West 44th Street, Manhattan; (212) 419-9331,  
algonquinhotel.com.