Next from the great jazz singer Ian Shaw following swiftly on from Greek Street Friday is a co-led album with saxophonist Tony Kofi themed around the music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. The upcoming release entitled An Adventurous Dream concentrates on some of the crown jewels of a century-plus of jazz in terms of composition, repertoire and the art of the song. To be issued by the Ross Dines helmed PX Records next month it is a live album that was recorded at the Dean Street Soho mothership - given issuing label PX is the house label of the Pizza Express Jazz Club and its sibling live music venues in Holborn, Covent Garden and Chelsea - in June last year.
The title borrows from the lyric to Ellington and Strayhorn song 'Something To Live For' introduced to the canon by Duke Ellington and His Famous Orchestra in 1939 and covered by many down the years including notably by Carmen McRae on a 1956 release, Nina Simone and Ella in the 1960s, the great Nat King Cole influenced easy listening singer Johnny Mathis in 1990 and Jane Monheit in the early 21st century on Come Dream With Me.
'Something to Live For' is also a song title that became the title of a book by the distinguished jazz scholar Walter van de Leur whose work on Strayhorn in 2002 followed on from David Hajdu's revisionist 1990s award winning classic Lush Life about Strayhorn's life as an openly gay man and how his contribution to Ellingtonia was often overlooked given the prejudices of the day. It is easy to forget but it was only in 1962 that Illinois became the first US state to decriminalise homosexuality. Strayhorn, known to fans affectionately as ''Sweet Pea'' or ''Strays,'' died in 1967. For the majority of his life he lived under punitive, unfair, laws, both in terms of his sexuality and, as an African-American, his race - note during a period of seismic societal change that the Civil Rights Act signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on 2 July 1964 prohibited discrimination in public places and provided for the integration of schools and other public facilities and made employment discrimination illegal thus closing down pernicious Jim Crow laws.
A BODY OF WORK THAT CONTINUES TO RESONATE
Why can't I have love like that brought to me?
My eye is watching the noon crowd
Searching each promenade, scanning the shore
For the one who will someday be my
Something to live for
Something to make my life an adventurous dream
The arrangement on Mabel Mercer and Bobby Short At Town Hall of the song from the late-1960s is one of our favourites, the lyrics subtly condensed rising to the great drama of its interior monologue.
BARRY AND DAVE GREEN COMPLETE THE QUARTET
In recent years the Welshman Shaw who turned 60 in 2022 - read a contemporaneous interview published on marlbank ahead of his birthday concert - has covered Strayhorn/Ellington/La Touche's 'Day Dream' with his simpatico Italian Quartet on 2020's Integrity.
We haven't got the full track listing of An Adventurous Dream so far so don't know whether that classic in a new arrangement has made the cut. Let's hope. We reckoned the Mark Murphy influenced Shaw's Greek Street Friday mentioned earlier in this piece was the best vocals album of 2023 - see our full list of choices published in the Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll. Kofi was also on fire with Sharp Little Bones on Volumes I and II last year.
The Greens, long time Shavian pianist Barry and Dave (no relation) - the veteran double bassist who was on the first ever PX release as a member of the Scott Hamilton Quartet - join Shaw and Kofi on the recording. Hailing from Nottingham and touring widely, the ex-Nu Troop saxist teamed up with Sharp Little Bones last year and resumes a playing acquaintance with SLB touring to Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk on the 23rd - they are the trio who work a lot at Nottingham venue Peggy's Skylight. Kofi has also been playing with classic street funk Afrojazz band Cymande recently.
An Adventurous Dream dates coming up are Warwickshire's Guildhall, Henley-in-Arden on 7 April and Pizza Express Jazz Club, London on 24 April for the official launch. Updated at 4.59pm with track listing now confirmed: 1 'Mood Indigo'; 2 'I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart' / 'Don't Get Around Much Anymore'; 3 'Isfahan'; 4 'My Little Brown Book'; 5 'Day Dream'; 6 'Satin Doll'; 7 'A Flower Is A Lovesome Thing'; 8 'Something To Live For'; 9 'Passion Flower'; 10 'Blood Count'; 11 'Raincheck'; 12 'Lush Life.'
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