Marjorie Barnes & Millennium Jazz Orchestra: Both Sides Now

Marjorie Barnes, a native New Yorker who has been living in Europe for almost fifty years including several decades in the Netherlands, summons her many years of experience to brighten and embroider Both Sides Now, her impressive debut recording with the world-class Millennium Jazz Orchestra (MJO). Barnes sang in the mid-1970s with the multiple Grammy Award-winning ensemble, The Fifth Dimension, and has worked with such luminaries as Frank Sinatra, Lena Horne, Sammy Davis Jr., Billy Eckstine and many others. She is relaxed and comfortable in a big-band setting, astutely enriching the splendid arrangements by MJO director Joan Reinders.

The program that Barnes and Reinders have chosen is an attractive blend of standards and one original, closing with a trio of classics, Joni Mitchell's spellbinding "Both Sides Now" and Michel Legrand's "I Will Wait for You" and "How Do You Keep the Music Playing?" Barnes is a throwback to an era in which singers let a song tell its story, eschewing any flamboyance or pretension that would subvert the composer's purpose. She simply sings each song the way it was meant to be sung.

Reinders, meanwhile, lends ample support by deftly arranging every number and choosing a single soloist to complement Barnes on most of them. Tenor saxophonist Joao Driessen escorts her on the Gershwin brothers' "Soon," which opens the session, and Henry Mancini's "Moon River," alto saxophonist Gerlo Hesselink on "Never Will I Marry" and the lone original composition, "I Haven't Got Anything Better to Do." Pianist Dirk Balthaus is front and center on "Detour Ahead," flautist Rob Sijben on "A Sleepin' Bee," baritone saxophonist Job Helmers on "That's All," trumpeter Suzan Veneman on "Both Sides Now" and "I Will Wait for You." Needless to say, every solo is exemplary.

That is a word which suits Barnes too, as she skates easily through every number with nary a false note or misstep. Listening to Both Sides Now, it is easy to see how Barnes could have replaced the peerless Marilyn McCoo, as she did for two years in The Fifth Dimension. Even now, nearly half a century onward, Barnes seems to have lost none of the elegance and charm she brought to that gig. She and the MJO make a lovely couple.