VARIETY Posted: Thurs., Mar. 13, 2003, 7:47pm PT Wendy Lands: The Songs of The Pianist (The Mint) Presented by Hip-O Records and ASCAP. Reviewed March 12, 2003. Band: Wendy Lands, Jim Gillard, Pete Snell, Armando Compean, Jay Condiotti, Robin Swenson. By PHIL GALLO Canadian singer Wendy Lands has recorded an album of pop songs penned between the 1930s and the early 1960s by Wladyslaw Szpilman , the subject of Roman Polanskis The Pianist. New English-lingo lyrics were commissioned by Szpilman s son Andrzej and those lyricists provided the between-song discourses on Szpilman s art, the movie and Lands interpretations. An informative as well as entertaining night, Lands and Szpilman s music pair up as well as Norah Jones and Jesse Harris, the Grammy-winning songwriter responsible for her hit Dont Know Why. In this context -- a concert premiere for these works -- Lands texturally saddles up with two Joneses, Norah and Rickie Lee, on songs that are nearly all romantic and hopeful. To create the works found on her Hip-O disc Sings the Music of the Pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman , Lands, producer John Leftwich and the lyricists used a German pianists straightforward playing of the melodies and did more subtracting than adding in creating the modern arrangements. Of the nine tunes performed during her hour onstage, only Turn Away possesses an Eastern European flavor; everything else is of the standards variety, from the show-tune ballad Without You to the so-very 1930s I Wish Youd Ask to Dance With Me to a song that commandeers the area exactly halfway between the Jones singers -- Smoke and Mirrors. Szpilman s influences certainly spring from the jazz age and in the pop context he was much more likely to lean on an Ellington or Gershwin trick than a twist he picked up from perfecting Chopin in Warsaw before World War II. Lands classified them as a treasure trove of standards no one has ever heard. The visibly pregnant Lands is, like the Joneses, more a stylist than a vocal bomb. Szpilman s songs are a perfect fit for her and Lands does wonders with the new lyrics, climbing into a song as a jazz or cabaret singer would, though she comes off as inviting as a well-meaning folkie. Her band of two guitars, upright bass, keyboards and her drummer husband Jim Gillard supplied gentle, complementary backing. Night was given added weight with the presence of Szpilman s son and wife as well as the songwriters, who spoke eloquently about the entire operation. Shira Myrow was among the most eloquent, noting that the songs possessed a romantic spirit that didnt get crushed by the Holocaust. She certainly has a handle on what makes this music so special.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Dec 2014 01:40:17 +0000
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