And in your lonely flight, haven't you heard the music in the night? Wonderful music, faint as a will o' the wisp, crazy as a loon, sad as a gypsy serenading the moon
Track of the day and new in the 1 Luv spot is 'Skylark' from Easy Sailing is from singer-pianist Anthony Strong this autumn. A collection of standards, the Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer song recorded and first released by Gene Krupa and Anita O'Day in 1942 and repopularised in recent years by Gregory Porter on his classic 2010 album Water opens the album which is to released on 11 November.
It's been quite a few years since marlbank last caught Strong live, on that occasion in 2014 at a festival in Derry when his sound was spearheaded by the classic blended Blue Note style of saxophonist Brandon Allen and trumpeter Graeme Flowers. Five years on Me & My Radio was the last record of Strong's to flicker on our radar.
Habitually sharp-suited, with a superb modern mainstream swinging piano style rendered as an updated version of Nat King Cole’s classic approach the style this time is wrapped around lush strings.
1990s trappings in the orchestrated fleeting cadences before the word ''Skylark'' rings out recalls an arrangement in the opening bar that switches on an electric light in our minds to think of the descending guitar riff of Sting's 1993 classic 'Shape of my Heart'.
Anthony's voice sits proudly alongside a sensibility such as that of the formidable US singer Peter Cincotti. Classics including Leonard Bernstein's 'Maria', 'Comes Love' and again that Nat King Cole identification intact all these years on - 'Nature Boy' also figure.
Anthony Strong, top - from the album sleeve
Tags: