Search - Billie Holiday :: Jazz Moods - Midnight

Midnight Mood

F. Hagan | Raleigh, North Carolina, USA | 12/06/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The idea of mood music is that you are giving texture to an experience by allowing music to represent it on a secondary level. The CD series Jazz Moods (Legacy) attempts to zero in on a traditional background mood of jazz and build it around the work of one artist at a time. In the Billie Holiday compilation, the chosen mood to be represented is "'Round Midnight," which deserves a little explanation, too. Imagine the drive back from a date or a dance in thoughtful silence, imagine the walk in the dark under a streetlight, or inhabit the lonely individual at the diner in the first hour of the new day-and you are in the mood of `Round Midnight.

The ephemeral thoughtfulness of `Round Midnight can be subject oriented in decisions like "God Bless the Child," or "I Can't Get Started." It can be a longing for a place like "Georgia on My Mind," or the wistful lonely wandering given personification in "I Cover the Waterfront," or "Some Other Spring." or "Gloomy Sunday." More often it is the tug at the bottom of a heart, and the thought of someone adored, lost, or missed. These emotions are tackled gracefully in the eternally resonating "Solitude," "Love Me or Leave Me," and "I Must Have That Man."

Billie Holiday's voice is as magical now as it was at the time of these recordings--offering depth, emotive and warm in its complexity. If jazz gives punctuation to emotions one cannot always find words for, and you require assistance in feeling them, then this compilation belongs in your library. Play it late at night, play it when you need to think, and play it when you're alone.

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