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Vocalist Joanne Tatham Releases "Out Of My Dreams"

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    Posted: 24 Feb 2015 at 8:17pm
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VOCALIST JOANNE TATHAM RELEASES NEW CD

OUT OF MY DREAMS

Featuring John Clayton, Tamir Hendelman, Peter Erskine,

Bob Sheppard and more

 

“A colorful voice with a great sense of tempo and time… what a pleasure it is to discover Joanne Tatham”

- Rex Reed

"...An exceptionally beautiful voice. It's reminiscent of the pop balladeers of the late '50's and early '60's,

but with a fine-drawn intensity and shimmering vibrato that are all her own."

- Terry Teachout

 

Joanne Tatham is the quintessential big-city girl – wry, no-nonsense, and smart, with a heart beating behind every word she sings. Songs flow out of her in a voice of liquid clarity, buoyed by such secure technique that she can forget all about it and focus on the stories at hand.

    

Joanne has an interesting one of her own. In 1993, she left behind a budding career as a New York musical-comedy performer in order to marry a TV writer and move to L.A.  In a few years they started a family. “This lifestyle change became an artistic change,” she says, “and it burst out into what I feel is my essence.” Remembering the swinging pop masters she had grown up loving at her family home in New Jersey – Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Sammy Davis, Jr. – Joanne began to feel her way as a solo singer in jazz clubs and cabarets.

    

Her self-reinvention worked. The Washington Post praised her “exceptionally beautiful voice”; Rex Reed, a true connoisseur of jazz singers, enthused about her “great sense of tempo and time,” adding: “What a pleasure it is to discover Joanne Tatham!”

    

This album is her third. The producer is Mark Winkler, a gifted jazz singer and songwriter from L.A.; the subject, of course, is love. But a torch singer she’s not; though Joanne knows all about disappointment, she doesn’t live in it. Her singing gives the reassuring sense that, whatever the pain, a happy ending is in store. She certainly takes risks. On this CD she tackles Broadway, bossa nova, post-bop modern jazz, Dave Frishberg, and Harry Nilsson. The arrangements, written and played by top-drawer L.A. musicians, challenge her musically without ever outshining the words.

 

You Taught My Heart To Sing,” she says, “sort of straddles my world.” It was first recorded in 1985 by its composer, McCoy Tyner, a titan of modern jazz piano; his lush music inspired lyricist Sammy Cahn to write of birds in flight and love that lasts forever. From the sax-and-voice intro to the high-flying ending, Joanne is in

relaxed command. She keeps impressive company. Tamir Hendelman, arranger and pianist on this and other tracks, is a trio leader, concert pianist, and a member of the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra – whose cofounder, bassist John Clayton, joins him on this CD. Saxophonist Bob Shepperd has played with Chick Corea and Steely Dan; drummer Peter Erskine is a two-time Grammy-winning graduate of Weather Report.

    

Joanne’s wistful but dry-eyed approach to ballads is clear on “Without Him (Without Her)”, Harry Nilsson’s 1967 hit. A Cuban-tinged piano solo by arranger Jamieson Trotter and Michael Shapiro’s Afro-Brazilian-style percussion keep the spirit high.

 

Devil May Care,” the title tune of Bob Dorough’s 1956 debut album, has become an anthem for the no-strings jazz life. Arranger Eli Brueggemann’s tricky modulations and meter changes would never fly at Saturday Night Live, where he works as musical director; but they don’t phase Joanne, who navigates them with the nonchalance the song requires.

    

Herbie Hancock wrote “Tell Me a Bedtime Story” in the late ‘60s as instrumental music for the Fat Albert TV show. A version by George Shearing caught Joanne’s ear. “The way he phrased it, I heard a story,” she said. At her behest, a producer friend, Clifford Bell, asked Hancock if there was a lyric. “Word came back: why doesn’t she write some? So I did.”

    

The film-noir-era jazz ballad “Detour Ahead” is the confession of a woman who has narrowly steered clear of a nasty crash. Joanne’s performance suggests safety at the end of the road; John Clayton bows and plucks as expressively as if he, too, were singing. They dip into the same crepuscular mood with “In a Lonely Place,” written by Mark Winkler and his singer-songwriter colleague, Marilyn Harris. A different kind of pain – that of getting stuck on the freeway – inspired “Too Long in L.A.,” Dave Frishberg’s comic harumph to his old hometown. The trio’s deadpan super-cool is a wink that Frishberg would appreciate.

   

Other tracks have their own novel touches. On Jon Lucien’s “You’re Sensational,” São Paulo-born Marcel Camargo plays cavaquinho, the percussive guitar used in samba and choro. Jobim’s “Vivo Sonhando (Dreamer)” boasts a pretty choral intro sung by Joanne, Camargo, and Michael Shapiro. In his solo on “Cool” (from West Side Story), Tamir Hendelman takes the song’s sinister vibe and fleshes it out with edgy, stabbing chords; Joanne is the siren with a smile of ice.

    

It melts in the title song. In Oklahoma!, farm girl Laurey downs a magic potion and sings “Out of My Dreams,” a fairy-tale vision of ideal love. Arranger Todd Hunter turns it into a floating jazz waltz; Joanne sings it with her sweetest optimism. To Oscar Hammerstein’s words she added a vocalese lyric, set to a melodic line by Hunter and inspired by the show’s bucolic theme.

    

Haystacks and barn dances are storybook images for Joanne, who now divides her time between New York and L.A. But her ability to roam all over the musical map, while sounding at home wherever she goes, is one of the things that make Out of My Dreams such a convincing journey. — James Gavin, New York, 2014

 

OUT OF MY DREAMS is available on Amazon, iTunes, and CDBaby.

 

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