James Rhodes

Jose James - Yesterday I Had The Blues: The Music Of Billie Holiday (2015) {Blue Note}
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Jazz / Vocal Jazz / Modern Jazz Vocals / Modern Jazz

José James has a reputation as a 21st century musical renaissance man. He's issued a remarkably consistent series of records that blur the lines between soul, funk, dance music, jazz, and rock. In addition, in 2010, he released For All We Know, a fine collection of jazz standards in duet with Belgian pianist Jef Neve. It is from this place that James releases Yesterday I Had the Blues: The Music of Billie Holiday. In his liner essay he cites Holiday as the artist who made him aspire to be a jazz singer. Accompanied by pianist Jason Moran, drummer Eric Harland, and bassist John Patitucci, James delivers a program of beauty and restraint for the centennial of her birth. James, who has the ability to accomplish startling vocalese and scat techniques, brings none it.

James Horner's gift, among many gifts, was his ability to find and focus on the most intimate and subtle emotions, bringing them to the forefront with his music. It mattered not whether he was scoring an epic like Titanic or an intimate drama like The Man Without a Face. The 2008 film The Boy in the Striped Pajamas was of the latter type, a film where the interior life of the characters was the driving force of the drama. Horner purposely avoids drawing attention to the music by limiting his palette to the somber sounds of piano, strings, oboes, French horns, low-lying trumpet and occasional ambient sounds. No other percussion — but the piano is always in the spotlight. Harmonic color is important, with relatively little dissonance. As the composer described it, the score undergoes a transformation over the course of the film, having very little forward momentum to "suddenly becoming panic." Horner, along with recording engineer Simon Rhodes, mixed and assembled a generous 52-minute album at the time of the film’s release, though it was never issued in physical form until this premiere Intrada CD. Recorded at the Eastwood Scoring Stage at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California, this album covers almost all the score and features several lengthy tracks comprising multiple cues, as was customary for the composer.