2006-01-31
Only the music gurus at WYCE can find stuff like this: Swiss jazz. Young singer/arranger Beat Kaestli (born and raised in Switzerland, but now a NYC crooner) is in the Harry Connick, Jr. mode and while we don’t need even more versions of “Autumn Leaves” (what is up with everyone covering that chestnut over the last year?), this kid’s strength is in his arrangements and his instrumental compadres.I think the disc gets better in the second half, with the instrumentation carrying cuts #7-#10. Listen especially to the trumpet in “So in Love,” the bass and sax in “Tenderly” and the organ in the interesting set-closer “I (Who Have Nothing)” * who remembers Tom Jones singing that on Top 40 radio? It is also different to hear a male lead on Gershwin’s “Summertime.” If this youngster wants to make it, my advice is to keep up the good work on the arrangements and choose less predictable numbers; that’s what makes the second half of this CD more intriguing.
1/06 MJVD Jazz-Contemporary (vocal)
Mamutrio
Primal Existence
VARIOUS
Rumble In the Great Lakes (Best of the Detroit Jazz Fest 2007)
THE BLUECAT EXPRESS
The Spirit of New Orleans
HOT CLUB OF COWTOWN
Four Dead Batteries - Original Soundtrack
PHO
Cash It
STEFON HARRIS
African Tarantella
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