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From Saturday 3.10.07 New York Times review of Jane Monheit's month-long stand at the Cafe Carlyle, which I find shockingly misogynist and hope it illicits a torrent of letters to the editor:
JANE MONHEIT
Café Carlyle, Carlyle Hotel
35 East 76th Street, Manhattan
(212) 744-1600
Through March 31
When Jane Monheit wraps her sweet, silky voice around Moon River, she suggests a kitten curled up on a rug, purring contentedly before a crackling fire. The song, included on her forthcoming album, Surrender (Concord), becomes a dreamy lullaby with a wordless, semi-improvised middle section that transforms it into a reverie floating in the limbo between drowsiness and slumber.
At the Café Carlyle, where she is appearing with a five-member band, the indisputable fact of her supple pop-jazz voice triumphs over a number of liabilities: her ballooning weight, her awkward patter (she needs a writer) and her tendency to talk too fast. Yet when she sings, these distractions fade into the background, and you notice how much more attention she pays to song lyrics today than she did seven years ago, when she was a 22-year-old jazz phenomenon from Long Island hailed as the next big whatever.
The premature hyperbole heaped on Ms. Monheit has been an added handicap. People are still waiting for the big whatever to explode. Ms. Monheit has never been the pure jazz singer that her early publicity suggested. A sultry torch singer who makes decorous forays into improvisation is closer to the mark. With some exceptions, including Moon River, her new album, to be released in May, is a plush collection of bossa nova ballads in the mode of Diana Kralls Look of Love.
The fit of Ms. Monheit and Brazilian music is the most comfortable to be found on any of her albums. Stevie Wonders Overjoyed lends itself to a light samba treatment. And in So Many Stars and Like a Lover, Brazilian ballads with English lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman, she immerses herself in the role of a besotted fantasist stretched out on a couch, composing mash notes to an imaginary lover.
How I envy a cup that knows your lips/Let it be me, my love/And a table that feels your fingertips, she croons in Like a Lover. As she sang it on Tuesday, she was not only the cup but also the saucer, the pot of tea, the table, the chair, the floorboards, the ceiling and, of course, the bed, in an enchanted pied-à-terre. STEPHEN HOLDEN
JANE MONHEIT
Café Carlyle, Carlyle Hotel
35 East 76th Street, Manhattan
(212) 744-1600
Through March 31
When Jane Monheit wraps her sweet, silky voice around Moon River, she suggests a kitten curled up on a rug, purring contentedly before a crackling fire. The song, included on her forthcoming album, Surrender (Concord), becomes a dreamy lullaby with a wordless, semi-improvised middle section that transforms it into a reverie floating in the limbo between drowsiness and slumber.
At the Café Carlyle, where she is appearing with a five-member band, the indisputable fact of her supple pop-jazz voice triumphs over a number of liabilities: her ballooning weight, her awkward patter (she needs a writer) and her tendency to talk too fast. Yet when she sings, these distractions fade into the background, and you notice how much more attention she pays to song lyrics today than she did seven years ago, when she was a 22-year-old jazz phenomenon from Long Island hailed as the next big whatever.
The premature hyperbole heaped on Ms. Monheit has been an added handicap. People are still waiting for the big whatever to explode. Ms. Monheit has never been the pure jazz singer that her early publicity suggested. A sultry torch singer who makes decorous forays into improvisation is closer to the mark. With some exceptions, including Moon River, her new album, to be released in May, is a plush collection of bossa nova ballads in the mode of Diana Kralls Look of Love.
The fit of Ms. Monheit and Brazilian music is the most comfortable to be found on any of her albums. Stevie Wonders Overjoyed lends itself to a light samba treatment. And in So Many Stars and Like a Lover, Brazilian ballads with English lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman, she immerses herself in the role of a besotted fantasist stretched out on a couch, composing mash notes to an imaginary lover.
How I envy a cup that knows your lips/Let it be me, my love/And a table that feels your fingertips, she croons in Like a Lover. As she sang it on Tuesday, she was not only the cup but also the saucer, the pot of tea, the table, the chair, the floorboards, the ceiling and, of course, the bed, in an enchanted pied-à-terre. STEPHEN HOLDEN
