Cool soulful different cool music
Elizabeth Wilson | New York, NY | 03/28/2008
(4 out of 5 stars)
"DownBeat 2009 April
Roseanna Vitro and Kenny Werner
The Delirium Blues Project
Half Note Records 4534 ***
If standards are songs with a lasting connection to the greater jazz and pop consciousness, then multiple candidates are offered to Roseanna Vitro and Kenny Werner's The Delirium Blues Project. Surrounding themselves with players able to transform country into blues, slick funk into sharper reggae, and pop classics into big-bellied New Orleans grooves, this unassuming duo commands the stage at the Blue Note in New York.
With her silken yet powerful pipes, Vitro ignites titles such as " Half Moon, " Joni Mitchell's " Blue" and Mose Allison's "Everybody's Cryin' Mercy." Not only do Werner's arrangements dramatically alter and maximize the songs' traditional atmospheres, but heightened by Vitro's scorched- earth readings, they rise to the level of widescreen classics. In another era, the Werner/Vitro team would've taken their show to Broadway, wowing the crowds with high flying, small ensemble productions of Mitchell's "Be Cool" (a la Steely Dan), a reggae-infused "What is Hip?" and Esther Phillips "Cheater Man." The musicians bring burn and boil to Werner's arrangements, Vitro wails and works it.
Ken Micallef
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