Title: At Home with Friends
Artist: Joshua Bell
Date: 2009
The idea is appealing . . . renovate your Manhattan apartment with a professional yet intimate sound stage and invite your friends to perform with you. That is exactly what Joshua Bell did, and it works well, especially if you have friends like Sting, Tiempo Libre, and Anoushka Shankar.
I had a lot of favorites in this album, but here are my top four picks:
Track 5: Para Ti – featuring Tiempo Libre. Catchy rhythms, catchy melodies. Find yourself transported to the streets of Havana.
Track 6: My Funny Valentine – featuring Kristin Chenoweth. I knew the actress from the TV sitcom Pushing Daisies, but I had forgotten that she could sing… I mean really sing. This rendition features a very long introduction, but if you wait about til 2:00 minutes into the piece, Chenoweth’s voice is astounding.
Track 11: Il Postino – featuring Carel Kraayenhof on the bandoneon. I always feel like I shouldn’t be tempted by this piece because the melody is obviously crafted to suck you in. Stunning piece and performed with just the right touch of sentimentality.
Track 15: Variant Moods: Duet for Sitar & Violin – featuring Anoushka Shankar, this piece was written by Anoushka’s father Ravi Shankar. This piece also has a long introduction, but at 2:49 minutes into the piece, the tablas pick up the tempo and music just dances off the page.
For a sampling of the album, try Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/At-Home-Friends-Joshua-Bell/dp/B002LMSWSC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1253914802&sr=1-1 Unfortunately, Amazon only gives you snippets, so you can’t catch the stunning vocals in Track 6 or the tabla-accomanied melodies of Track 15, but it will give you an overall taste of the album.
[…] only drawback is that the two main leads — Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel — have very similar-sounding voices (both sopranos with a strong Broadway […]