Search - Karen Oberlin :: My Standards

This eclectic selection takes from the related fields of both jazz and cabaret singing. Karen Oberlin casts a wide net and picks tunes from the '30s to the '90s, from Irving Berlin to Elvis Costello (and Karen Oberlin from the 00's). There's never any attempt to lose herself in any of those idioms - no matter what the source is, she's always K.O. In many numbers, Karen uses a jazz rhythm section for accompaniment: the multifaceted pianist Arturo O'Farrill, the incomparable bass of Jay Leonhart, the sassy rhythms of drummer Victor Jones, the flights of fancy of guitarist Dan Carillo. Peter Brainin's saxophone, now playful, now haunting, and Roland Guerero's steamy tropical percussion round out the band. Most of the texts are highly evocative descriptions of a specific locale. If the medium is the message, then the setting is the story: "Since You Stayed Here" describes a room, "A Nightingale Sang" depicts a city and an era, "And The Angels Sing" reads like a vivid recollection of a dream. Some of these descriptions are solidly literal, e.g. "Barangrill," which paints a picture of exactly that (although with spaces between the words) while "Where Do You Start?" takes as its starting point the idea of a couple breaking up (been there, done that) and dividing up their tchochkes (ask KO's half-Jewish step kids to tell you what that means) and from there spins an elaborate reflection on the nature of love and relationships. By contrast, Dory Previn's text to "Theme from...." is such a jumbled collage of ideas, which so well succeeds, as the authors intended, in conveying confusion, that it doesn't even stand still long enough to rest on a phrase that might give it a title. Both this and "Shipbuilding," another surreal, detached set of metaphors that somehow becomes crystal clear when KO sings it. KO seems equally comfortable going from one extreme to the other: "Count Your Blessings," which she delivers in a haunting, a capella treatment is nothing if not direct and concrete. "How Deep Is The Ocean," by the same Irving Berlin, uses the biggest of all concepts, the depth of the ocean, the height of the sky, to express the most intimate of ideas, which KO makes even more personal in the setting of a one-to-one duo with sensitive pianist Fred Hersch. These songs each tell a specific story through evocative description. . Ultimately, it may be the sweet sound of KO's voice that matters most of all, and leaves her music ringing in our hearts. (Selected from the liner notes of Will Friedwald)