Fumio Yasuda and Theo Bleckmann: Fumio Yasuda and Theo Bleckmann: Las Vegas Rhapsody: The Night They Invented Champagne

Theo Bleckmann is best described as a "performance stylist" after ten years in the busy New York nightlife. Boasting a remarkable personage, elegant magnetism and a three-and-a-half octave vocal range, Bleckmann brings to Las Vegas Rhapsody all of prewar Berlin's over-the-top creativity and delicious intemperance. He does this against the sumptuous backdrop of Fumio Yasuda's lushly elegant orchestrations. Fumio Yasuda was born in 1953 in Tokyo. He began composing at age seventeen and graduated from Kunitachi College of Music as a Composition major.

For Rhapsody Yasuda arranges the music for both full orchestra with strings and small ensemble. The disc is book-ended by Bleckmann and Yasuda's "Las Vegas Rhapsody," decked out in black-tie musical regalia. The Rhapsody shares the large ensemble format with brightly-lit interpretations of "The Night They Invented Champagne" and "A Gal in Calico" and velvety thoughts of the vocal-ensemble "Teacher's Pet" and "True Love."

Smaller confines are used for "You Make Me Feel So Young" (voice and piano) and a shoot-the-moon "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," reducing to a single instrument, the marimbaphone, for the bubbly "You Go to My Head." Bleckmann's vibratoless voice floats above the percussive steps like, wellâ