Search - Angela Hagenbach :: Poetry of Love

ANGELA HAGENBACH POETRY OF LOVE AMAZON RECORDS ARCD-2822 Singer/songwriter Angela Hagenbach bridges the gap between contemporary and classic jazz on Poetry of Love. The album includes ten tunes dealing with the many facets of romance on the star-studded disc featuring special guest appearances by Clark Terry, Jimmy Heath and others. The music begins with Hagenbach?s sensuous reading of Tell Me About It, the beautiful bossa by Michael Franks from his 1983 Passion Fruit date. This sexy rendering will popularize Hagenbach and her ensemble with a wider audience. Angela?s arrangement of I Can?t Believe You?re In Love With Me is hip and playfully supported by the swinging Nat King Cole styled New York rhythm- section reminiscent of the sophisticated, unabashed pleasure seeking of the Cotton Club jazz era. Bittersweet is an original poignant bossa nova, bridging two free verse poems into a single passionate lyric full of autumnal imagery, remarkably rendered by Hagenbach. Tenor great Jimmy Heath joins Hagenbach and her east-coast rhythm section for a heartrending reading of the romantic classic Never Let Me Go. Dark Dreams, another original and poem turned song a serpentine sonnet set to an Afro Cuban beat. A dream induced introduction swells into a swinging Latin line offering an innate perception of the lyric. Trumpeter emeritus and master mumbler, Clark Terry is Hagenbach?s very special guest on the Blues Are Brewin?. Angela alternately eschews her usually superlative articulation to engage in a hilarious historic dialogue with the great C.T. The two manage to mangle the English language to great effect. Cole Porter?s I?ve Got You Under My Skin flirts rhythmically between Brazilian and straight-ahead sections and the overall mood of the music is alluring and begs to be heard again and again. On You Keep Calling Me, another Hagenbach original, featuring a Pantoum poem (a Malayan interlocking form) over a Bahian afoxé rhythm. The end result floats over a modern melody reminiscent of the best of Sergio Mendes and Brazil 66. Ironically, Angela takes one of that group?s biggest hits, Michel Legrand?s Watch What Happens, and sings it as a medium straight-ahead swing rather than the popular bossa beat. An excellent vehicle for lyrical vocalizing and some fine scatting. The date concludes with a slammin? samba arrangement of It Might As Well Be Spring. It opens with a breezy vocal-pandiero-surdo introduction then the band joins in for a brilliant Brazilian finish to a very exceptional disc. Mark Bacon, producer/host of Jazz After Dark, KRVS 88.7 FM, says, "Like Sarah Vaughan or Shirley Horn, Angela inhabits a song, and breathes new life into her carefully selected material. Poetry of Love is the answer to the question, ?Where have all the great jazz vocal records gone??"