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Joyce Moreno: Cool
By"The answer came to me during a soundcheck when I started playing, just for fun, a Cole Porter song in a different way," Moreno continues. "The song was 'Love For Sale,' a song about a demimondainea hooker, in short. But then this afoxé groove came up, and, all of a sudden, Cole Porter's call girl became a hooker from Bahia. And I thought, 'Man, these tunes can be rearranged and be really fun!'"
Moreno's spry Brazilian workout of "Love for Sale" became the first track on Cool, which also features her percussive, syncopated up-tempo take on another Porter classic, "Let's Do It." But it's the slow and soft songs that turn up the heat throughout. Curiously quiet yet vibrant and steamy, this reconstructed "Fever" emerges as a tropical Brazilian jungle. "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)" transforms into a lonesome guitar ballad, her voice floating on the phrase "Day-O" as light as moonlight, with drums and piano slowly creeping into her accompaniment like daybreak silently but steadily overgrowing darkness. She again whispers this contemplative mood in the echoes of "'Round Midnight."
Moreno can thank the composers' pantheon of Mandel, Mancini and Mercer for Cool's most brilliant moments. In her self-accompanied rumination on "Moon River," her vocal and guitar illuminate the beauty in every corner of a melody and lyric that needs no help to sound perfect. She pours out this same mood in "The Shadow of Your Smile." "I used the original chart given to me by author Johnny Mandel himself (years ago he invited me to one of his projects and we interacted musically)," Moreno explains. "But in order to expose the beauty of this songsometimes looked at as a bit too mellow, performed with exaggerated sentimentalismI opted for the 'extra-slow' mode and sang it as cool as I possibly could."
"This album was my own arranger's approach to these jazz standards," Moreno's liner notes conclude. "I had a lot of fun doing it. I hope listeners will feel the same."
Track Listing
Love For Sale; Fever; Cool; Day-O (The Banana Boat Song); Let’s Do It Let’s Fall In Love; Round Midnight; Invitation; The Shadow of Your Smile; Mingus, Miles and Coltrane; You Do Something To Me; Nature Boy; My Favorite Things; Moon River.
Personnel
Joyce Moreno
vocalsJoyce Moreno: vocals, guitar, arrangements; Tutty Moreno: drums, percussion; Helio Alves: piano; Rodolfo Stroeter: bass; Tomaz Andrade: vocals; Anna Coelho: vocals; André Miranda: vocals.
Album information
Title: Cool | Year Released: 2017 | Record Label: Far Out Recordings
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