Laura Fygi – The Best Is Yet To Come (2011)

01 – The Best Is Yet To Come		play
02 – Smile
03 – Too Darn Hot
04 – I’ve Got A Crush On You
05 – This Can’t Be Love
06 – Cheek To Cheek				play
07 – Fever
08 – That Old Black Magic
09 – It’s Easy To Remember
10 – You And The Night And The Music
11 – Old Devil Moon
12 – The Good Life
13 – Rose, Rose, I Love You

Laura Fygi has long considered Julie London one of her principal inspirations. Yes, the lushly exotic Fygi, whose multicultural heritage is Dutch by way of Egypt and Uruguay, can smolder with London-worthy intensity. But Fygi is a far more gifted vocalist, with a substantially wider range and significantly sharper interpretive skills. If comparisons need be made, equating her with Peggy Lee seems far more apt. Like Lee, she can swing easy and seduce cunningly, all while maintaining a feisty sense of self-reliance. The Best Is Yet to Come is Fygi’s 12th album as leader and marks the 20th anniversary of her solo career. Remarkably, it is her first recorded session with a big band. Co-arrangers and producers Jan Menu and Johan Plomp have smartly placed Fygi in settings that recall platters crafted by Lee, Sinatra and their ilk under the hip direction of such craftsmen as Billy May and Neal Hefti. Along the way, Menu and Plomp make several enriching choices. “Smile,” too often misinterpreted as sunnily optimistic, is softly clouded in grey. “Too Darn Hot” rides atop a scorching, brass-wrapped drum line worthy of Buddy Rich. “The Good Life” slowly builds from gentle musing to impassioned vamp, and a pulsating “You and the Night and the Music” sounds as if it has been plucked from hard-hearted Hannah’s songbook. Even “Fever,” where you might expect the Lee echoes to be most evident, is distinctly re-imagined, its slow burn escalated to a three-alarm blaze. --- Christopher Loudon

For The Best Is Yet To Come, Laura selected a number of standards by Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, and her all-time idol Julie London, among others. "Each and every one of them means something to me in some way. I'm a 'storyteller', so the songs have to grab me somehow. Plus I need to be able to express them when I'm onstage." In order to get a proper sense of the repertoire, Laura always seeks out the stories within the songs. "For instance, I do the ballad It's Easy To Remember, because we all know how devastated we are when a relationship breaks up. And with a track like Too Darn Hot, I only need to recall the intense Asian heat in order to feel the essence of it." The album was recorded with a full-sized big band, led by Jan Menu and Johan Plomp; two of Laura's permanent musicians, who have amply demonstrated their arranging and producing skills with this effort. It also signalled the realisation of a long-term wish of the songstress. "I'd already performed with a big band, and it sounded just great every time we played. Then the idea emerged of using that set-up to record an album." The album features Rose, Rose I Love You sung in mandarin.

download (mp3 @320 kbs):

uploaded yandex 4shared mega solidfiles zalivalka cloudmailru filecloudio oboom

back