Singer’s third album, featuring classic compositions and
original material, is out Feb. 1, 2020, on the MusicGate label.
It’s called “The Great American Songbook”—that vast body of
20th century popular standards composed by such giants as Cole Porter, George
and Ira Gershwin, Richard Rodgers and many others—but its lure has always
extended far beyond the shores of the United States of America. Singers and
musicians in every corner of the world have long been drawn to these timeless
classics, among them Japan’s Hiromi Kanda.
On her newest album, Seven Elegant Ballads—her followup to
the well-received Hiromi in Love and Days of Yesterday—the vocalist recrafts
five of the most beloved songs in American history in her own lushly
orchestrated, dramatic style, and augments them with two original compositions
that fit snugly alongside the perennials.
Seven Elegant Ballads will be released via MusicGate on Feb.
1, 2020.
Why Seven Elegant Ballads? “These songs take you into a
romantic world,” says Hiromi, who recorded the album at Hollywood’s famed
Capitol Studios, with her longtime producer Yusuke Hoguchi and the
multi-Grammy-winning engineer Al Schmitt (Diana Krall, Ray Charles, Paul
McCartney). The album features an orchestra composed of more than 50 musicians,
plus three guest appearances by the late keyboard legend Joe Sample.
Hiromi deliberately chose to include seven tracks on the
recording, as the number has great significance to her. “Seven is a mysterious
number,” she says. “There are seven seas, the Seven Sisters, seven colors of
the rainbow, the Seven Voyages of Sinbad and more. I put my spiritual emotions
into my album.”
Seven Elegant Ballads opens with “A Nightingale Sang in
Berkeley Square,” written in 1939. Hiromi makes it her own in this expansive
rendition, which, she says, was inspired by Marc Chagall’s painting “Lovers in
the Red Sky.” Says Hiromi, “I love the brilliant world he creates in that
painting, and the lyrics of ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’ remind me
of it. Plus, it’s just fun to sing.”
“Moonlight in Vermont,” written in 1944, is “a very romantic
love ballad that evokes the winter,” says Hiromi. “I love the image of the
lines ‘Icy finger waves, ski trails on a mountainside, snow light in Vermont.’”
“Around the World” is the theme from the 1956 film Around
the World in 80 Days. Once again, Kanda puts her own stamp on it, exploring the
cinematic qualities of the tune with great flourish. “I sing this song as if
I’m a traveler on a beautiful hot-air balloon,” she says.
The first of the album’s two originals, “Days of Yesterday,”
is next in the sequence. Both it and “Twilight Tears,” which closes out the
recording, were composed by Hiromi and Hoguchi, a famous Japanese composer,
arranger, studio musician and lyricist, who is also Hiromi’s husband. Both
songs appeared earlier on Hiromi’s Days of Yesterday album, and she felt the
two sentimental love ballads deserved another go on the new project, in order
to spotlight Hoguchi’s talents. “He is a marvelous composer and arranger, who
knows and respects the Great American Songbook,” she says. “The original songs
create a nice balance in the album. I believe it is important to keep this
style fresh by creating new songs in that vein.”
Two other classics fill out the track list. “Smile,” with
music by the great Charlie Chaplin, is “a very lovely song and it gives me
courage,” Hiromi says. “Joe Sample’s piano playing on this track is just
wonderful.”
Finally, there’s “Don’t Blame Me,” from 1933. “This is the
first time I’ve sung the song,” she says. “I feel like it’s coming out of an
old radio when I hear it.”
Hiromi says that the time spent in Hollywood recording Seven
Elegant Ballads with such an illustrious cast of contributors was “thrilling,
and I’m very proud of it. We had a dream that someday we would create wonderful
music in the U.S. That dream has now come true several times over the years. I
hope listeners enjoy entering my romantic music world in Seven Elegant
Ballads.”
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