“I’ve done
records where I had a token vocal tune, all the way back to my first album,”
Benoit says. “But I never did an entire record [with vocals]. So the thought
here was to do something really different.”
The result
is Benoit’s thirty-fifth recording as a leader and his first with a vocalist. 2
In Love, set for release on June 16, 2015 via Concord Records, features Jane
Monheit, the GRAMMY®-nominated, cool-toned chanteuse from New York, who burst
on the scene in 1998 as the first runner-up in the Thelonious Monk
International Vocalist Competition. (International release dates may vary)
“Concord
suggested Jane Monheit,” Benoit says. “She was the perfect vocalist. I like to
make records a certain way: I prefer to go in live and record it all at once.
And a lot of vocalists can’t do that: they need to edit, fix and use
auto-tune. But Jane doesn’t need to do
any of those things. Many of the keys were difficult, but she sang everything
live. Jane also has a background in Broadway, which is another part of my
lexicon that I’ve not explored. She was up to the task and easy to work with.
She made it a complete, perfect package.”
Along with
Monheit, Benoit also enlisted the help of three lyricists: Mark Winkler,
Lorraine Feather and Spencer Day. “Mark is my long-time collaborator,” says
Benoit. “And I’ve known Lorraine (daughter of jazz critic Leonard Feather) for
thirty-five years. Then, there’s Spencer Day: I was really impressed with him.
What a nice, young man and fantastic singer. He brought some new blood to the
table.”
This
terrific triad breathed lyrical life into Benoit’s songs and helped showcase
Monheit’s considerable skills as an interpreter. “I met them all,” she says.
“They did great work and made it very, very easy for me to do my job.”
Supported
by an alternating rhythm section featuring drummers Jamey Tate and Clayton
Cameron, percussionist Lauren Kosty, guitarist Pat Kelley and bassists David
Hughes and John Clayton (of the Clayton Brothers), Benoit and Monheit swing and
sing on ten tracks imbued with, to use Duke Ellington’s elegant phrase, “the
feeling of jazz” in ballad, mid-tempo, neo-classical-, Latin-, pop- and
Broadway-styled genres that range from the bossa nova-buoyed title track to the
optimistic, piano-driven “Love Will Light the Way.” Violinist Michelle Suh and
cellist Cathy Biagini add their impressionistic airs to the waltz “Dragonfly,”
the evocative, 5/4 time-signatured “Something’s Gotta Give” – originally from a
play co-written by Benoit and Winkler about Marilyn Monroe – and “The Songs We
Sang,” a beautiful melancholy ballad, originally titled “Out of Tune,” about a
couple that wrote hit songs and are trying to reignite their magic.
On the
ebullient “Fly Away,” Monheit flexes her considerable vocal muscles. “I had a
really great time wailing on that one,” she says, “because it’s a style of
music that I don’t often get to sing.”
“Barcelona
Nights,” is pulsed by an infectious Latin groove, which was inspired by a visit
to Spain by Benoit and his wife. “I talked to Lorraine about it,” Benoit says,
“and she came up with a beautiful lyric.” On the Pat Metheny-esque “Love in
Hyde,” which was previously published under the title “A Moment in Hyde Park,”
Benoit showcases his spirited piano prowess. “I recorded it on my second album,
Life Is Like a Samba, with a big orchestra. And I always wanted to redo it,” he
says. The album concludes a heartfelt solo piano performance of “Love Theme
from Candide”/”Send in the Clowns,” by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim,
dedicated to the memory of Benoit’s mother, Betty June Benoit (1929–1997).
“Those
were my mom’s two favorite songs,” Benoit says. “My friend David Pack (who
started the group Ambrosia) introduced me to Lenny, and we worked on a benefit
concert at Carnegie Hall. I got to know him a bit. So it was always my destiny
to do something with “Candide.” And I felt it would make a nice segue into
“Send in the Clowns.”
In
addition to his obvious skills as a soloist, 2 In Love also highlights Benoit’s
overlooked gifts as an accompanist. “He’s a wonderful piano player,” says
Monheit. “He has a great understanding of singers, and that makes him a very
good accompanist.” When he was coming up, Benoit worked with singers Patti
Austin, Connie Stevens, and Ann-Margaret. But he credits Lainie Kazan as his
biggest influence in the fine art of vocal accompaniment. “I was twenty-one
when I started with her,” he says. “She literally taught me how to accompany
singers.”
Benoit’s
work with singers is but one more intriguing aspect of his multi-talented
musicianship. He was born in Bakersfield, California, and grew up in Los
Angeles. Benoit was bitten by the jazz bug after watching a Charlie Brown
special on television and listening to the music of Vince Guaraldi in 1965. “I
was already a fan of the comic strip,” he says, “but when I heard that jazz
piano trio, that was the defining moment when I decided that I wanted to play
like Vince Guaraldi.”
At the age
of thirteen, Benoit studied privately with pianist Marya Cressy Wright and
continued his training with Abraham Fraser, who was the pianist for famed
conductor Arturo Toscanini. He also studied music theory and composition, and
later studied orchestration with Donald Nelligan at El Camino Junior College
and film scoring from Donald Ray at UCLA. He studied conducting from Heiichiro
Ohyama, assistant conductor of the L.A. Philharmonic, and furthered his musical
education with Jan Robertson, head of the conducting department at UCLA, and UC
Santa Barbara symphony orchestra music director Jeffrey Schindler.
After
working with Lainie Kazan as her musical director/conductor in 1976, Benoit
released albums on the AVI label from 1977 to 1984. He later released several
chart-topping recordings for GRP, including Freedom at Midnight (1987), Waiting
for Spring (1989) and Shadows (1991), which both topped Billboard’s
Contemporary Jazz Charts at #5, #1, and #2, respectively. His other noteworthy
recordings include Letter to Evan (1992), his tribute to another piano
influence, Bill Evans, and Here’s to You, Charlie Brown: Fifty Great Years
(2000). Benoit also recorded with Russ Freeman on their album The
Benoit/Freeman Project (1994), and on their follow-up collaboration, 2 (2004),
which was released on Peak Records. His other recordings for the label include
American Landscape (1997) and Orchestral Stories (2005), which featured his
first piano concerto, “The Centaur and the Sphinx,” and a symphonic work,
“Kobe.”. In 2012, he released Conversation on Concord’s Heads Up International
imprint.
Benoit
received three GRAMMY® nominations in the categories of Best Contemporary Jazz
Performance for “Every Step of the Way” (1989), Best Large Ensemble Performance
for GRP All-Star Big Band (1996), and Best Instrumental Composition for “Dad’s
Room,” the latter from the album Professional Dreamer (2000). In 2010, Benoit
received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Smooth Jazz Awards, and
he’s worked with an impressive potpourri of musicians including the
Rippingtons, Emily Remler, Alphonse Mouzon, Dave Koz, Faith Hill, David
Sanborn, CeCe Winans and Brian McKnight.
Benoit’s
film scores include The Stars Fell on Henrietta (1995), produced by Clint
Eastwood, and The Christmas Tree, produced by Sally Field, which was voted Best
Score of 1996 by Film Score Monthly. He has served as conductor with a wide
range of symphonies including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Asia America
Symphony Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra. A long-time guest
educator with the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation, he received that organization’s
Excellence in Music Award in 2001. His musical selections have been featured on
The Weather Channel and his version of Vince Guaraldi’s “Cast Your Fate to the
Wind” is included on compilation The Weather Channel Presents: Smooth Jazz 11
(2008). Benoit also currently hosts a morning radio show on KKJZ 88.1 FM in
Long Beach, CA.
Born in
Long Island, NY, Jane Monheit heard a wide range of singers, from Ella
Fitzgerald to Bonnie Raitt, and also listened to Broadway pop and classical
vocalists. Monheit started her professional career while she was a student at
Connetquot High School in Bohemia, NY, where she graduated in 1995. She studied
at the Usdan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts and was awarded their
distinguished Alumna Award. She was also a student at the Manhattan School of
Music and studied under voice instructor Peter Eldridge. She graduated with
honors in 1995 with a BA in Music and received the William H. Bolden Award for
Outstanding Accomplishments in Jazz.
Monheit
burst on to the national scene as the first runner-up in the 1998 Thelonious
Monk Institute’s Vocal Competition behind veteran singer Teri Thornton. In
2000, she released her first recordings as a leader on the N-Coded label
including Never Never Land, Come Dream with Me (2001), In the Sun (2002) and
Live at the Rainbow Room (2003). She also recorded for Sony, Epic and EmArcy,
and released two recordings on Concord, Surrender (2007) and The Lovers, the
Dreamers, and Me (2009), which featured the ballad “The Rainbow Connection.”
Monheit has worked with Ramsey Lewis, Steve Tyrell, Tom Harrell, Terence
Blanchard, Ivan Lins, Mark O’Connor, and Freddy Cole, and appears on Memphis
pianist Harold Mabern’s new album, Afro Blue, and with Brazilian bossa nova
icon Wanda Sá on her latest release, Live in 2014. Monheit also garnered two
GRAMMY® nominations for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s)
for her rendition of the Judy Collins ballad "Since You've Asked",
from the album Live at the Rainbow Room (2003), and “Dancing in the Dark,” from
Taking a Chance on Love (2005).
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