The Mountan is You

Pianist Oscar Peterson has made a remarkable number of records through the years and his two songbook series for Verve (each recording features the songs of a different composer) were extensive, to say the least. During 1952-54 he cut ten albums (113 songs) and in 1959 he added nine more records (108 songs), in addition to his regular busy activities. Because these were essentially easy-listening sets with concise interpretations that always kept the melodies of the composers close by, they are not considered Peterson's greatest work but they are enjoyable in their own right. This particular two-CD set has some of the highlights from these marathon projects, most of which (the Gershwin songbooks excepted) had never been out on CD before…

Jennifer Holliday shot from obscurity to stardom in 1981 when she originated the role of Effi in the Broadway musical Dreamgirls and introduced the song "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going." Holliday quickly earned a reputation as one of the finest vocalists of her generation, but after focusing her talents on gospel music in 1995 with the album On & On, she retired from the recording studio. With 2014's The Song Is You, Holliday makes her long-awaited return to pop music, lending her rich voice and passionate vocal style to a romantic set of standards and R&B classics. The Song Is You includes the selections "At Last," "Nobody Does It Better," "The Look of Love," "Love Me by Name," and many more.

In 1996, Oscar Peterson's sprawling Verve Songbooks were tapped for a 32-track sampler named after Jerome Kern's ballad "The Song Is You." In 2004, Back Up Records boiled it down to 17 tracks, presenting five apiece by George Gershwin and Duke Ellington and four by Vincent Youmans and Richard Rodgers, with Kern's title track perched at the top of the list like a cherry on a trifle. Recorded in 1952 and 1959 with guitarists Herb Ellis and Barney Kessel, bassist Ray Brown, and drummer Ed Thigpen, these pleasant, intimate performances of mainstream jazz standards are the very embodiment of accessibility and good taste, and may provide dependable background support for lounging, dining, comfortable carousing, and casual conversation.

Their collaboration has been hailed as a summit meeting of two jazz masters. Enrico Rava, trumpeter from Trieste, and Fred Hersch, pianist from Cincinatti, share a deep affection for the tradition and a profound sense for melodic invention. In this recording, with flugelhorn and piano glowing in the superb acoustic of the Lugano studio, Rava and Hersch explore some much-loved standards: Jerome Kern’s “The Song Is You”, Thelonious Monk’s “Mysterioso” and “’Round Midnight”, Jobim’s “Retrato em Branco e Preto”, and George Bassman’s “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You”. They also play their own tunes, Fred’s “Child’s Song” and Enrico’s “The Trial”, and improvise freely together. Enrico Rava has been an ECM artist for almost fifty years. The Song Is You is Fred Hersch’s first for the label. The album was recorded at Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI in November 2021, and produced by Manfred Eicher.