The great German bass-baritone
Thomas Quasthoff has done some astonishing things in his career, even appearing on-stage in the role of Amfortas in
Wagner's Parsifal. This, though, has to be the widest left turn that
Quasthoff has made yet, a "jazz" album of 12 American pop standards. Yeah, sure, other classical singers have done it, often with crossover dollars or Euros in mind, almost always with laughably pompous, treacly or condescending results.
Quasthoff claims that he had experience singing jazz per se early in his career, but so did singers like
Kiri Te Kanawa and
Renée Fleming -- neither of whom sound convincing in pop.
So how does
Quasthoff manage to succeed in this venture where others do not? For one thing, there is nothing resembling operatic or lieder feeling in his delivery. His English diction is perfect, and yet his rich, deep, resonant timbre is intact, arrestingly so.
Herb Jeffries or
Johnny Hartman are the closest reference points, but
Quasthoff doesn't copy either of them. When
Quasthoff raises his voice to a big climax on
Stevie Wonder's "You And I," he doesn't sound like a classical singer; there's a edge and grit at the top that an impassioned pop vocalist would be more likely to bring. He doesn't improvise, but he can comfortably bend a swinging inflection now and then; one imagines that he has imbibed heavily from the fountain of
Sinatra. The only serious criticism is that sometimes
Quasthoff's treatment of the line sounds a bit stiff and unyielding. Perhaps if he had recorded in the same room with the band, the real-time contact with real-life jazzers would have loosened him up some. In any case,
Quasthoff gets a first-class production from
Till Brönner, who also contributes some crackling or moody-
Miles trumpet solos in spots. The arrangements feature either a studio big band or the luxurious Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, with
Alan Broadbent (who redeems "Secret Love" with an appealing bossa nova treatment) and
Nan Schwartz exchanging chart action, spelled by Steve Gray's New Orleans second-line jiggling of "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive." ~ Richard S. Ginell