Audio and Classical Files

By PHILIP BOOTH, BRIAN ORLOFF and JOHN BELL YOUNG
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 14, 2002

NORAH JONES, COME AWAY WITH ME (BLUE NOTE) Norah Jones, 22, a New Yorker by way of Texas, is the ascendant jazz diva du jour, the latest fresh-faced ingenue seeking to find a place center stage in a business that regularly chews up and spits out her kind by the dozen. Remember, say, Madeleine Peyroux, and her brilliant 1996 debut? Here's hoping Come Away With Me, produced by Arif Mardin (Bee Gees, Carly Simon, Aretha Franklin, Hall & Oates), will yield results more lasting than a spate of rave reviews and a splash of commercial attention.

The new girl on the block, like Peyroux and Cassandra Wilson, has a way with reinvention, as demonstrated by a saucy take on Hank Williams' Cold Cold Heart, her reverb-heavy piano echoing her own playful vocal lines, over the bluesy shuffle of Lee Alexander's upright bass. The Nearness of You, a Hoagy Carmichael standard, is also beautifully rendered, a breathy but substantive confession of love, and Jones drops Floyd Kramer-style piano flourishes into the warm gospel-blues grooves of J.D. Loudermilk's Turn Me On.

Traces of Wilson, Simon, Rickie Lee Jones and Edie Brickell are evident in the vocals of Jones, the daughter of sitar master Ravi Shankar. The singer isn't yet capable of the depth of feeling of someone like Wilson or Diana Krall, or the technical finesse of seasoned jazz vocalists, but she is doing her own thing, writing and arranging appealing, twang-edged love songs with her bandmates. One quibble: Must everything be played at such a sluggish tempo? B+

-- PHILIP BOOTH, Times staff writer

SHERYL CROW, C'MON, C'MON (A&M RECORDS) Sheryl Crow endeavored to make a feel-good summer record with her fourth album, C'Mon, C'Mon, one that merits repeat listens and smacks of surf and froth. Despite some hefty breakup-themed tunes, Crow succeeds.

Even in the Beach Boys-tinged, saccharine single Soak Up the Sun, Crow melds political messages with her usual witticisms. "I'm going to soak up the sun while it's still free," she sings. In the title track, Crow beckons, all vixenlike, "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon break my heart again," over a folksy melody flushed with 12-string acoustic guitars.

Though Crow maintains a sexual image, she doesn't tether herself to it, nor does it marginalize her music. On Steve McQueen, the kitschy, electric anthem that kickstarts the album, Crow sings, "I ain't taking s-- off no one."

Yes, Crow proves she's hardcore, but she has a sensitive side, too. In the searing Safe and Sound, Crow pleads for a lover's security, though they've broken up. The song crescendos, drawing attention to the lush strings which underscore her plea. It's Only Love, a lilting ballad, is top-notch.

Drawbacks: Occasionally prosaic lyrics threaten to undermine Crow's strengths. The lovely Diamond Road is full of cliches. The duet between Crow and Don Henley feels contrived and grandiose, and out of place on this fine album. A-

-- BRIAN ORLOFF, Times correspondent

CLASSICAL FILE

DANCES FOR THE PIANO, WALTER HAUTZIG (AMERICUS). In moments of reflection, musicians have sometimes posed this question: Where would dancers be without music? Quick to counter, dancers have responded in kind: Where would musicians be without muscle?

The distinguished Vienna-born American pianist Walter Hautzig, now 80, has given ample voice to both concerns in his elegant new survey of musical dance forms. Hautzig's brand of virtuosity, even in the most straightforward composition, bears little in common with the firebrand pyrotechnics favored by his younger colleagues. Rather than drawing attention to his piano playing, Hautzig instead pulls the listener into the orbit of the music itself.

In Brahms' sturdy, earnest and ardent waltzes, Hautzig never fails to deliver a burgeoning inner voice or jaunty rhythm with the savoir faire of one who grew up with this music in its native environment. In the Spanish works included here, Hautzig emerges with the authority of a native Andalusian or, in the case of Ginastera's lively dances, an Argentinean.

Witness his magical reading of the latter's languid, bittersweet Danza de la Moza Donosa, where he exploits the pedal points that enhance its tension as well as its quiescence. Again, in Ignaz Friedman's rarely played Gartnerwaltz No. 2 (Victor Borge often played this when not joking), Hautzig is all charm, careful to distinguish sentiment from sentimentality.

In Chopin, Hautzig is no less big-boned, eschewing the cavalier approach favored by less seasoned artists. To some his way with Chopin may seem labored; for this listener it is abundantly detailed and ultimately revelatory.

But it is in Alfred Grunfeld's technicolor paraphrase of Johann Strauss' endearing operetta Fledermaus that Hautzig pulls out all the stops. In this glamorous work, Hautzig is in his element; bouquets of sound mingle effortlessly with its effervescent um-pah rhythms and tenuous asides. That Hautzig does so with such subtle and effortless transparency is all the more astonishing. Would that we all could be so young at 80. A

-- JOHN BELL YOUNG, Times correspondent

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.