Voices LP

Description

Ambrosetti harkens back to the early 1960s - to the era before the Beatles and his first encounters with early Miles Davis, but also to the sounds of the Hi-Lo's, Ray Conniff, Bert Kaempfert, and those quirky, jazz- infected film scores featuring sophisticated vocal arrangements. The group consists of the tried- and- tested trio of Alan Broadbent (piano and arrangements), Scott Colley (bass), and Peter Erskine (drums), yet the album's true stars are the members of the top-tier, five-voice vocal ensemble led by singer Janis Siegel - a founding member of the Grammy-winning group The Manhattan Transfer. The group also features soprano Aubrey Johnson, alto Carolyn Leonhart, tenor Kevin Osborne , and Janis's former Manhattan Transfer bandmate Trist Curless on bassbaritone. Broadbent is said to have honed his vocal arrangements by studying Gustav Mahler, and indeed, the harmonic progressions possess a late- Romantic, floating quality - occasionally accompanied by the kind of elusive shimmer found in Debussy's music, such as in the a cappella version of Ambrosetti's "Desert Rose," set to lyrics by Giorgia Mancio.