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Elvis Costello burns "Bright" with jazz set
Fri Mar 3, 2006 06:55 PM ET
By Dan Ouellette
NEW YORK (Billboard) - With his latest CD, "Live With the Metropole Orkest: My Flame Burns Blue," Elvis Costello builds another strong case for his prowess as a vibrant jazz vocal stylist.
Previously Costello, best-known as a wistful yet raucous rocker with a multiple musical personality, exhibited this on his 2003 piano-based "North" (like "Flame," released on Deutsche Grammophon), as well as on the Mingus Big Band's 2002 CD, "Tonight at Noon: Three of Four Shades of Love" (Dreyfus), on which he wrote lyrics to Charles Mingus' "Invisible Lady" and performed the tune with exuberant perfection.
"My Flame Burns Blue" was recorded live at the 2004 North Sea Jazz Festival in the Hague, Netherlands. Costello gives jazz spins to some of his own compositions (such as "Almost Blue"), while adding newly crafted lyrics to such jazz standards as Billy Strayhorn's "Blood Count" (retitled "My Flame Burns Blue") and another Mingus gem, "Hora Decubitis." The latter tune opens the CD with string-swelled intrigue and solo trumpet, saxophone and guitar jolts.
"It's not straight jazz," Costello says, chatting in a suite at New York's W hotel in Union Square the day of his Joe's Pub showcase with Allen Toussaint for their dynamic "River in Reverse" collaboration (to be released in May on Verve Forecast). "But I am playing with a great jazz orchestra. I'm not trying to prove anything. This captures the freedom to just go up there and sing a song. It was a terrific experience."
As for his jazz-orchestral rendition of his pop hit "Watching the Detectives," Costello says, "It was fun realizing the song in the kind of idiom that I dreamed of when I wrote it. Back then I didn't have the access to all those sounds."
Reuters/Billboard
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