Should You be a River

Willie Nile's style has never been monochromatic, either as a songwriter or a performer, but over the course of a recording career that was launched in 1980, two things have been consistent – the guy clearly loves rock & roll, and he sure likes guitars (Nile even released an album called House of a Thousand Guitars). So was anyone out there expecting Nile to make an entire album of contemplative, midtempo acoustic numbers built around the guy playing piano? In many respects, If I Were a River upends the average fan's expectations about a Willie Nile album (especially after 2013's decisively rockin' American Ride), although the dramatic force of Nile's songwriting and the passion of his vocals should be more than familiar to anyone who has been listening to his music over the years

This is the final chapter of a trilogy of albums in which I explored and arranged popular songs. The entire project was made in collaboration with vocalists Theo Bleckmann and Kate McGarry, pianist Gary Versace, and the Frankfurt Radio Big Band. For the first recording, Songs I Like A Lot, I selected the majority of the songs for the album. Many of the songs I chose were from my childhood, and as I started to really listen to them again, I was surprised by how well I actually knew them. The second recording, Songs We Like A Lot, is composed primarily of songs that Theo and Kate liked and chose for me to arrange. Uri Caine held down the piano chair on this recording. And for this third and final recording, Songs You Like A Lot, we asked listeners to nominate their favorite songs for me to arrange. We then had an internet-wide vote on a list of nominated songs, and I chose (with the help of Kate, Theo and Gary) from the top 20 most popular songs.

Record dates made by American jazz musicians for the Japanese jazz market are often a bit different in their approach. These 2006 sessions, recorded by Ken Peplowski over two days with pianist Ted Rosenthal, bassist Gary Mazzaroppi, and drummer Jeff Brillinger, are unusual in that ten standards (all ballads) are featured, though with the leader playing one version on tenor sax, then immediately following it with another on clarinet. The players are capable enough in varying the approach to each tune with the different instrumentation, with Peplowski's smoky tenor and lyrical clarinet satisfying the listener each time. But one would bet that most listeners would rather have this two-CD set programmed with one disc devoted to each instrument, rather than hearing each song twice in a row…