Sting Duets

A companion album of sorts to 2019's My Songs, Duets collects 17 duets Sting has recorded over the years. Some of these tracks appeared on soundtracks, some were included on albums by his duet partners, others – including "September," a song recorded with Zucchero that makes its debut here – trickled out on compilations. Collectively, these duets showcase Sting The Polymath, a cultured and worldly individual with an ability to synthesize his diverse interests into smooth, jazzy, mature pop. What's striking about the compilation is how a roster as diverse as Eric Clapton, Shaggy, Mary J. Blige, Annie Lennox, Herbie Hancock, Sam Moore, and Julio Iglesias doesn't sound especially eclectic; when the common denominator is Sting, all the guests adapt to his particular ways.

A companion album of sorts to 2019's My Songs, Duets collects 17 duets Sting has recorded over the years. Some of these tracks appeared on soundtracks, some were included on albums by his duet partners, others – including "September," a song recorded with Zucchero that makes its debut here – trickled out on compilations. Collectively, these duets showcase Sting The Polymath, a cultured and worldly individual with an ability to synthesize his diverse interests into smooth, jazzy, mature pop. What's striking about the compilation is how a roster as diverse as Eric Clapton, Shaggy, Mary J. Blige, Annie Lennox, Herbie Hancock, Sam Moore, and Julio Iglesias doesn't sound especially eclectic; when the common denominator is Sting, all the guests adapt to his particular ways.

Tony Bennett has so many adoring celebrity fans it should come as no surprise that when a major duets album is planned, he's able to draw a roster of the biggest recording stars from the rock and vocal worlds, plus a pair of country music wildcards. (This despite the fact that he recorded an album with several duets in 2001, and a full-album collaboration one year later with k.d. lang.) One surprise is how well producer Phil Ramone paired Bennett with both duet partners and fitting standards – among them Barbra Streisand on the optimist's anthem "Smile," Dixie Chicks for the flapper standard "Lullaby of Broadway," Bono on the wickedly spiteful "I Wanna Be Around," Tim McGraw on "Cold, Cold Heart" (the Hank Williams song that was Bennett's biggest country crossover hit), Stevie Wonder on his own "For Once in My Life," Juanes for "The Shadow of Your Smile" (which was a hit first for the Brazilian Astrud Gilberto), and Sting on the torch song "Boulevard of Broken Dreams."

Trumpeter Chris Botti's To Love Again: The Duets picks up where his stellar 2004 release When I Fall in Love leaves off, with more gorgeously lush and heartfelt orchestral jazz via the London Session Orchestra. This time showcasing guest vocalists – as well as a handful of instrumental tracks – Botti takes an even more classicist approach than before and once again brings to mind such iconic jazz albums as Clifford Brown with Strings and Miles Davis' Porgy and Bess. Largely known as a smooth jazz artist with a sweet trumpet tone, it wasn't until When I Fall in Love that Botti dropped the smooth jazz synthesizers and pop-oriented compositions in favor of Gil Evans-style jazz orchestrations and an acoustic backing quartet.

Sting - After disbanding the Police at the peak of their popularity in 1984, Sting quickly established himself as a viable solo artist, one obsessed with expanding the boundaries of pop music. Sting incorporated heavy elements of jazz, classical, and worldbeat into his music, writing lyrics that were literate and self-consciously meaningful, and he was never afraid to emphasize this fact in the press.

This is an attractive recording with a style very much suited to the unique repertoire on the program. These are not operatic duets but chamber pieces, to texts of mostly unknown poets, accompanied by a smooth continuo group consisting of cello, archlute, and director Robert King on keyboards. Many of them were written in Italy, early in Handel's career, but he returned to the form during his highly public years in the 1740s. The booklet makes much of the music's similarity to Handel's operatic language, and indeed some of the tunes here will be familiar. Sample the first part of Se tu non lasci amore, track 11, some of which turns up again in "O Death, Where Is Thy Sting?" from Messiah.