Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Frederic Loiseau Meets Carlton Schroeder: Red Shoes
Frederic Loiseau Meets Carlton Schroeder: Red Shoes
ByOn Red Shoes, Loiseau and California pianist Carlton Schroeder, his former teacher and one-time sideman with Mel Tormé, Sarah Vaughan and others, alternates between four standards and four originals. The title track, however, is not a version of the Elvis Costello song, but sounds like a variation on "J'ai ta main," as played by the aforementioned de Chassy and bassist Daniel Yvinec on their duet record Chansons sous les bombes (Bee Jazz, 2004).
Loiseau and Schroeder are not afraid of pungent, oft-recorded classics. Take "Body and Soul": journalist Gary Giddens once wrote an essay about the tune, for which he claimed to have reviewed over ninety versions. On the Red Shoes version Schroeder's soloing is stately and magnificent, but ever-so-decadent as well: music to which the vaguely depressed protagonists of a Douglas Sirk movie might sip their Old Fashioneds. My tastes run in that direction, sometimes; even if yours don't, however, you will savor the bluesier tinge lent by Loiseau toward the end of the number.
"Here's That Rainy Day," meanwhile, slows the tempo to the point where the melody barely coheres, the way pianist Ivo Pogorelich approaches the Chopin nocturnes, or Betty Carter any number of songs including "The Man I Love," from Look What I Got! (Verve, 1988), or "Body and Soul/Heart and Soul," from Finally! (Blue Note, 1969).
Overall, Loiseau's virtuosic playing possesses a kind of hard-edged bluesy quality that remains coolly elegant; a characteristic that, in general, suffuses Red Shoes in its entirety.
Track Listing
Sunny Side For Fred; Here's That Rainy Day; Derri
Personnel
Fr
Album information
Title: Red Shoes | Year Released: 2007 | Record Label: Deluxe Productions
< Previous
Steve Kuhn Solo Piano at the Fazioli ...
Next >
Doug Ramsey: Rifftides
Comments
Tags
Frederic Loiseau Meets Carlton Schroeder
CD/LP/Track Review
Frederic Loiseau
Jeff Dayton-Johnson
Deluxe Productions
United States
Red Shoes