The Beautiful Bridge

I was back in the studio on and off over the winter recording more jazz tracks, and a fair amount of time at the piano writing. This is in some ways a traditional vocal jazz record of standards, except that half of them are original songs written in standard form. When I write standards I feel like I'm channeling. They write themselves, I am the interpreter. It's an amazing experience of listening and learning that I feel really lucky to have come naturally. Even as a kid I found myself singing entire songs as if they were being dictated by the ghost of some songwriter from the forties who never had their day.
But then a kind of song will come along that while it has the formality of a standard, is more intimate, more about the elemental experience of life on earth. More of my own voice comes through, my own thoughts.

There's one recent song that crosses the line between the two, the old & new, the cheekily romantic & the postmodern, a Bossa called 'Lost In The Blue', and I'm really interested to hear the response to it. In the spring, on the day of these photos, we were rerecording it. I had just added a tricky instrumental bridge where simple repeats had been. Steve, Jim and T. played a beautiful instrumental track. I’ve got a sample of it on my website music page (at the bottom) .

Jim Curtin, T. Xiques, Margaret McDuffie, Steve Raleigh