Celia Berk is technically a singer, but somehow the term “singing” sounds too impersonal to describe what she does. To me, it’s more like she’s sharing these songs, in the most direct and intimate way. Anyone can sing them (well, maybe not me), but no one else can do what she does.

I think of Celia as a musical explorer who sallies forth in search of amazing songs that the rest of the world has either ignored or forgotten. Then, having excavated the raw material, she switches from adventurer to artisan, crafting each arrangement in careful collaboration with her essential aide-de-camp and music director, Tedd Firth.

Finally, when she presents what she has come up with, it’s not like your usual singer-audience relationship where there’s a physical or psychological gap. It’s less a performance than an intimate dialogue between two close friends. She’s sharing every precious gem one at a time, as if the two of you were sitting next to each other. “Listen to this one… and this… wait till you hear this.” As it happens, this particular gift translates very well into the medium of recording. The communication is entirely between you and her, and any other people would be superfluous.

And it’s not just Celia Berk herself. The whole presentation is designed to be as intimate and personal as music can possibly be. The basic instrumental backing is one that I’ve long wanted Tedd to use. I’m very glad he realized this is the perfect opportunity to revive the classic format of the King Cole Trio: piano, bass, and guitar. When you have rhythm masters as astute as Tedd, every singer’s favorite bassist Jay Leonhart, and the protean guitar virtuoso Matt Munisteri, the addition of a conventional trap drum kit would only get in the way. Rex Benincasa’s percussion here echoes not only the great Nat King Cole but the iconic modern jazz pianist Randy Weston. Like Cole, he maintained that hand drums like congas and bongos suited a small group much better, propelling the group without pulling focus.

Two other gentlemen deserve credit for helping to make this into something special. Pianist Sean Gough helped Celia conceive some of these treatments early in the project, and engineer Scott Lehrer gives the recording a warm, intimate sound in the spirit of Nat King Cole’s After Midnight.

Celia is both the central performer and the head of the archeology department: she gives credit to songwriter/scholar Roger Schore (who wrote the beautiful text to Billy Strayhorn’s Bittersweet) as well as to your humble servant for helping her excavate a tune or two. However, it was Tedd who surprised us all by discovering the largely unheard verse to the Van Heusen/Cahn/Sinatra single How Are Ya’ Fixed For Love? I wrote the intro to the Sinatra Singles songbook 25 years ago, and I consult with the Van Heusen estate almost daily, and even I never realized that.

But it ultimately isn’t the scholarship that drives this whole enterprise forward, but Celia’s gift for taking this diverse material and personalizing it, even on songs that are somewhat familiar, so that they come out sounding like we’ve never heard them before. Back in the day, a lot of jazz singers would do Comes Love, but I confess to not having heard it for a decade or two and certainly not with the verse. Fixed For Love is an especially worthy creation. She starts with a Sinatra song (which we know from the 1958 duet with Keely Smith and never really heard as a solo), and Tedd makes it more King Cole–like with some suitable Trio-style block chords in his piano solo.

Ever intrepid, Celia is unafraid to travel deeper into jazz territory than I’ve ever heard her do before – witness the thoughtful scat solo on Sweet and Lovely. This one doesn’t have a verse but takes a vintage 1930s Bing Crosby conceit of reusing the bridge (“in my heart a song of love is haunting me…”) as an introductory verse. You might call it “pre-cycling.” Another favorite track, Boum!, is in a rhythmic universe all its own. It’s set in a vigorous 2/4 that I wouldn’t exactly describe as “jazzy” but is nonetheless bouncy as heck in the manner of a French music hall number. Celia gives me credit for introducing her to this song by Charles Trenet, the most optimistic and melodic of the great French singer-songwriters.

I’m particularly fond of the mashup of two songs of nocturnal activity, Moonburn and The Late, Late Show. The first might be said to have started life on the wrong foot since Hoagy Carmichael and Edward Heyman wrote it for Paramount Pictures, which shoehorned it into the original movie of Cole Porter’s Anything Goes. I can’t imagine any of those three great songwriters being happy about that. Still, Moonburn was, in and of itself, an excellent song for leading man Bing Crosby and also for Celia here. She marries it matchmaker style to The Late, Late Show, which some will know from Dakota Staton and George Shearing, others from Nat Cole and John Pizzarelli. The song was written under a pseudonym but is actually the work of Capitol Records producer Dave Cavanaugh with lyricist Roy Alfred.

Celia’s other job of matchmaking/mashup-making is The Shadow of Your Smile, a song often played in the 1960s as a bossa nova, with a genuine Jobim song, Vivo Sonhando (Dreamer). She does such a convincing job that I am now prepared to forget Shadow’s actual verse (“one day we walked along the sand”). She shows that these two songs work together so well that I have no doubt this collage of two great and compatible songs will become a permanent combination.

There are two duets here – Celia with just David Finck’s bass (Right As The Rain) and Tedd’s piano (With Every Breath I Take) – that I regard as extra special. Right As The Rain could be the title for this whole project, since the entire album seems right in the same natural and organic way that the weather is. With Every Breath I Take was written by Cy Coleman and David Zippel as a song to evoke 1940s film noir, and this it surely does, even though there are few genuine 1940s noir movies that have a song like this. Both numbers are amazingly intimate, even more so than the rest of the album.

Celia also deserves props for finding two numbers by 1970s singer-songwriters that I’ve never heard in this context, or anything close to it, Carly Simon’s It Happens Everyday and Stevie Wonder’s Overjoyed. Simon’s original has folklike cadences and harmonies running throughout. But I find that the song makes more of its point in this interpretation, underscoring how the end of a love affair is somehow both unique and routine at the same time. I also welcome this interpretation of Overjoyed. Celia,Tedd and company strip it down to its bare essentials, adding only an understated Brazilian beat. This is many degrees less “over” than Wonder’s version, but no less joyful.

Ervin Drake’s Now That I Have Everything is a fitting closer. We haven’t heard this one since before Margaret Whiting died in 2011. It’s one of those great summing up songs that says everything that needs to be said. Contrary to the text, it’s both flattering and kind.

Hugh Martin’s Love comes from around the same time as Cole Porter’s I Love You. Both sound like the result of a dare to come up with an original and meaningful song using the starting point of such a basic title. Here Celia makes us realize, in a way few singers can, that love is, in fact, never ever the same.

Will Friedwald, June 2022

Will Friedwald writes about music and popular culture for publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Stage Review and Vanity Fair. He is the author of ten books including the award-winning A Biographical Guide To The Great Jazz And Pop Singers, and Straighten Up and Fly Right: The Life and Music of Nat King Cole.

Music by James Van Heusen/Lyric by Sammy Cahn
Barton Music Corporation and Concord Music Group, Inc. o/b/o Cahn Music

Arrangement by Tedd Firth with Sean Gough

Celia Berk, vocals
Tedd Firth, piano
Jay Leonhart, bass
Matt Munisteri, guitar

CELIA:
This flirty, swinging number seemed a charming way to ease the listener into thirteen songs about the highs, lows and in-betweens of love.

If you know it, chances are you’ve heard Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack era recording. It’s not as well known as some of the other great Van Heusen/Cahn tunes, so qualifies as the kind of hidden gem by great songwriters that I tend to gravitate toward.

Pianist Sean Gough and I included it in the set list of our COMES LOVE show. When it came time to prepare the recorded version, Tedd Firth encouraged me to include the verse (“I’ve never been considered inquisitive…”). A hidden gem within a hidden gem!

Words and Music by Charles Trenet; English Lyric by E. Ray Goetz
Bourne Co.

Arrangement by Tedd Firth

Celia Berk, vocals
Rex Benincasa, percussion
Tedd Firth, piano
Jay Leonhart, bass
Matt Munisteri, guitar

CELIA:
I first heard this song at one of Will Friedwald’s Clip Joint sessions, where he curates a fascinating “mixtape” of videos across a wide range of performers and topics. That particular night, he included Charles Trenet singing his song BOUM! And I instantly loved it. It was hard to find sheet music, so I eventually sent away for a Trenet songbook – which turned out to be all chord charts and all in French!

I then listened to Trenet singing it in English, which was somewhat hard to decipher. But my friend Roger Schore (see BITTERSWEET song note) told me about an Andy Williams recording of BOOM! on his Under Paris Skies album. With Roger’s detective skills, we learned that the English lyrics were by E. Ray Goetz, who was a songwriter, a founder of ASCAP and the brother of Irving Berlin’s first wife. And we discovered that the lyrics in the bridge refer to the classic Kipling poem “Mandalay” where “dawn comes up like thunder.”

Here again, Tedd tweaked what Sean and I had done in our live performances. He starts the arrangement in cut time and then goes to a 4 feel on the first “But boom…” And, with four musicians, the piano has a moment as the ticking clock, the percussion as the heart going tick-tick-tock, the guitar as the tweeting birds and the bass as the buzzing bees.

While we were preparing this recording, the song began a second life as part of my cabaret show ON MY WAY TO YOU: Improbable Stories That Inspired An Unlikely Path. Working with director Mark Nadler, we created an entirely different arrangement to express the internal panic of stage fright. That percussive feeling certainly made it into the vocals of this recorded version.

We decided to use the French spelling of “boum” for this track, as an homage to the original Trenet version that first captured my imagination.

Moonburn Words and Music by Hoagy Carmichael and Edward Heyman
The Late, Late Show Music by Murray Berlin/Lyric by Roy Alfred
Songs of Peer, Ltd., and Warner Bros Music a Div of Warner Bros Inc.;
EMI Longitude Music Co. and Jonroy Music Company

Arrangement by Tedd Firth with Sean Gough

Celia Berk, vocals
Tedd Firth, piano
Jay Leonhart, bass
Matt Munisteri, guitar

CELIA:
I came across MOONBURN while exploring a Hoagy Carmichael songbook and was charmed. I enjoy being a musical matchmaker, putting two songs together to see if they will bring out something interesting in each other. I had been holding THE LATE, LATE SHOW for just that kind of opportunity and the two songs seemed to hit it off with each other.

As Will Friedwald mentions in his Liner Notes, “Murray Berlin” is actually a pseudonym for Capitol Records producer Dave Cavanaugh. One of so many things I have learned from Will.

Words and Music by Ralph Blane and Hugh Martin
EMI Feist Catalog Inc.

Arrangement by Tedd Firth with Sean Gough

Celia Berk, vocals
Rex Benincasa, percussion
Tedd Firth, piano
Jay Leonhart, bass
Matt Munisteri, guitar

CELIA:
I very much admire the music of Hugh Martin, whose best-known songs include THE TROLLEY SONG and HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS. His I’M THE FIRST GIRL (IN THE SECOND ROW, IN THE THIRD SCENE OF THE FOURTH NUMBER) – introduced by Nancy Walker in the Broadway show Look, Ma, I’m Dancin’! – is included in my latest cabaret show. And, with singer Rich Flanders, I recorded ISN’T IT ROMANTIC/WASN’T IT ROMANTIC, in which Martin and Marshall Barer wrote a beautiful countermelody intended for Jeanette McDonald to perform as a duet with her younger self singing the Rodgers & Hart classic.

Lena Horne introduced LOVE in the 1945 movie Ziegfeld Follies. There are many wonderful recordings by many great interpreters of the Great American Songbook. Tedd took the arrangement Sean and I had developed and gave it a drive propelled by Rex Benincasa’s percussion. There’s a kind of whiplash to the lyrics of this list song. So I experience the way Tedd tagged “never the same” at the end as a kind of collective exhaustion after an impossible effort to nail down just what love can be.

Words and Music by Carly Simon
Universal Music Corp. o/b/o C’est Music

Arrangement by Tedd Firth with Sean Gough

Celia Berk, vocals
Tedd Firth, piano
Jay Leonhart, bass
Matt Munisteri, guitar

CELIA:
This lovely song was hiding in plain sight in a Carly Simon songbook. A hidden gem by a great songwriter!

It’s on her 1983 Hello Big Man album, and if anyone else has covered it I haven’t found that version. I read her memoir Boys In The Trees, never expecting to find a reference to this song. But there it was, in the context of the end of her first great love affair. She writes how they would reminisce, “both of us aware we had been in that stage of our relationship where couples who love each other say good-bye, in very slow motion, before moving on to others.”

The idea of a slow motion good-bye stayed with me, and I asked guitarist Matt Munisteri to consider himself the “boy” of the song. I can hear his wistful guitar speaking to the “girl” of the song, can’t you?

Words and Music by Gus Arnheim, Charles N. Daniels and Harry Tobias
Harry Tobias Music Company, Anne-Rachel Music, Jl Music 2 LLC, Silver Seahorse Music, LLC, and Range Road Music, Inc.

Arrangement by Tedd Firth

Celia Berk, vocals
Tedd Firth, piano
Jay Leonhart, bass
Matt Munisteri, guitar

CELIA:
Tedd took some initial ideas that Sean Gough and I had for this 1931 standard and created an opportunity for me to move a little further into the jazz realm. I love the vocalese he wrote for me to do with bassist Jay Leonhart. And it was just a thrill to sing Tedd’s arrangement and join these incredible musicians.

Music by Billy Strayhorn/Lyric by Roger Schore
Music Sales Corporation and G. Schirmer, Inc.

Arrangement by Tedd Firth
Celia Berk, vocal
Tedd Firth, piano

CELIA:
BITTERSWEET was given to me by my friend Roger Schore, who shares the song’s backstory below. I had done a version with Sean Gough, but when it came time to record this album, I offered Tedd a blank slate to see where he would go – and where he might take me. It’s a very rangy song, and the first thing he did was lower it further into my speaking range. That heightened my sense that this is an interior monologue, which certainly helped me convey Roger’s emotionally exposed lyrics.

We debated having a piano solo in the middle, but Tedd ultimately went with the beautiful introduction you hear. Every singer should be lucky enough to have such an expressive musical foreshadowing to guide them into their vocals. It then took us only a few takes to find the best way to convey the arc of the song together.

ROGER SCHORE:
BITTERSWEET was composed by Billy Strayhorn. As an instrumental, it was recorded in 1956 under its original title BALLADE FOR VERY TIRED AND VERY SAD LOTUS EATERS. With Strayhorn on piano, it was introduced on records by “Johnny Hodges and the Ellington All-Stars without Duke,” hence the album’s title Duke’s In Bed. By the time I purchased the album, I was trying my hand at adding lyrics to jazz instrumentals and after hearing the recording, I felt that I had made a real discovery as the song was unknown to me. Its serpentine melody and unusual intervals proved irresistible to this neophyte lyricist. I began the lyric by searching for a title that would match the series of three note phrases running through the piece. The word “Bittersweet” came quickly, which naturally led to the idea of the dissolution of a love affair and its aftermath. The lyric went on to describe those mixed emotions lovers feel following a breakup. The song was introduced and championed by Barbara Lea, one of our finest jazz-influenced singers. Since then, the song has been finding its way, slowly but steadily, into the repertoire of those cabaret and jazz singers who enjoy discovering and bringing somewhat obscure, but nevertheless worthy, songs to an appreciative audience.

Anyone hearing this recording will certainly understand my enthusiasm for what Celia and Tedd have achieved. This is any songwriter’s “dream team” and as the lyricist I am extremely grateful that they chose to record it.

You will not hear one wasted vocal flourish or unnecessary musical embellishment. Listen to the very emotional, but low flame intensity Celia brings to the words “that broken heart” and the depth of sadness she conveys when singing the penultimate “bittersweet.” Notice how effectively she phrases in the last “A” section, holding the last note in “amazing” and tying it to “that mixture of…” in one breath! Her vocal perfectly captures the duality and contradictory emotions that often accompany a breakup. She is quite the singing actress!

Tedd begins the song with the bridge and no vocal. His sensitive playing sets the proper emotional tone and “says” as much as any verse could do. And I love the ascending scale he plays behind Celia in the last section, climaxing together on the word “that.” It’s difficult to believe that up to this project, they had never worked together, so simpatico are they with one another.

In my opinion, Celia and Tedd have taken BALLADE FOR VERY TIRED AND VERY SAD LOTUS EATERS out of the jazz canon and remade it into BITTERSWEET, a gorgeous art song. I am extremely happy with the result.

Vivo Sonhando Words and Music by Antonio Carlos Jobim; Dreamer English Lyric by Gene Lees
The Shadow Of Your Smile Music by Johnny Mandel/Lyric by Paul Francis Webster
Corcovado Music Corporation; EMI Miller Catalog Inc.

Arrangement by Tedd Firth with Sean Gough

Celia Berk, vocals
Rex Benincasa, percussion
Tedd Firth, piano
Jay Leonhart, bass
Matt Munisteri, guitar

CELIA:
This is another one of my matchmaking efforts, and I do think these two songs were destined to meet. They seem to be commenting on each other’s perspective.

DREAMER is the English language version of Jobim’s VIVO SONHANDO. THE SHADOW OF YOUR SMILE is also known as LOVE THEME FROM THE SANDPIPERS, a 1965 film. I used to hear it all the time and then it kind of disappeared, maybe because the radio stations that used to play it kind of disappeared!

Music by Harold Arlen/Lyric by E.Y. Harburg
WB Music Corp. o/b/o Glocca Morra Music and S.A. Music

Arrangement by Tedd Firth

Celia Berk, vocals
David Finck, bass

CELIA:
This is from the Broadway musical Bloomer Girl and is the only love ballad in that score. Biographers Harold Meyerson and son Ernie Harburg wrote that “Yip” Harburg didn’t write “mushy love songs” and mature lyrics always appeal to me. I just love the Harburg and Arlen coda “As rain must fall, and day must dawn, this love, this love must go on.” It’s always struck me as both emphatic and prayerful.

I asked Tedd if we could try it with just a bass, and David Finck provides the most swinging raindrops you’ll ever hear.

Music by Cy Coleman/Lyric by David Zippel
Words and Music Worldwide o/b/o Notable Music Company, Inc.

Arrangement by Tedd Firth

Celia Berk, vocals
Tedd Firth, piano

CELIA:
In addition to the studio sessions with the other musicians, Tedd and I spent one afternoon on our own recording BITTERSWEET, WITH EVERY BREATH I TAKE and NOW THAT I HAVE EVERYTHING. Thanks to Tedd (and engineer Scott Lehrer in the control room) it was a wonderful three hours of collaboration with no judgment and lots of experimentation until we found our version of each song.

WITH EVERY BREATH I TAKE is from the Broadway musical City of Angels. Our recording was influenced by a version that Tedd, director Mark Nadler and I were creating in parallel for a cabaret show. For that project, we had settled on a very stark, breathless approach, focused on the idea that life can knock the wind out of you. I definitely carried that sensibility into the recording studio and resisted the impulse to make the album version into a belted torch song. Instead, Tedd and I focused on the terrible possibility that your heart really is fragile enough to break. And we also explored the sense of drifting on a lonely sea, which Tedd’s solo on the Fazioli grand piano beautifully conveys.

Words and Music by Lew Brown, Charlie Tobias and Sam Stept
Wc Music Corp. o/b/o Ched Music Corporation, Chappell, and Co., and Wc Music Corp.

Arrangement by Tedd Firth with Sean Gough

Celia Berk, vocals
Tedd Firth, piano
Jay Leonhart, bass
Matt Munisteri, guitar

CELIA:
This is another lesser-known standard that ended up being a lot of fun. List songs can be a bit predictable if you’re not careful, but we worked hard to mix it up in unexpected ways. That started with my using a really vernacular tone of voice. Then I asked Sean if there was a way to keep changing the keys. He happily obliged until I ended up on the C below middle C. And Tedd, Jay and Matt were of course wonderfully playful throughout.

It was Tedd’s idea to bring a Nat King Cole Trio (piano, bass, guitar) feeling to this entire album and you can really hear the beauty of that idea on this track.

Words and Music by Stevie Wonder
Jobete Music Co Inc. and Black Bull Music Inc.

Arrangement by Tedd Firth with Sean Gough

Celia Berk, vocals
Rex Benincasa, percussion
Tedd Firth, piano
Jay Leonhart, bass
Matt Munisteri, guitar

CELIA:
I first heard this song years ago as Muzak piped into a supermarket. I stood listening, but couldn’t figure out who it was under the less-than-optimal audio conditions. It took me years to realize it was Stevie Wonder, and because I didn’t know the song assumed most other people didn’t either. I’ve been surprised and delighted when people hear me sing it and say, “Oh that’s one of my favorite songs.” Or “That’s the song my husband and I chose for the first dance at our wedding.” It even ended up woven into a medley in my cabaret show, and despite being broken up into relatively short sections, someone invariably tells me how happy they are to hear it.

For the album, Sean and I had sketched out an approach and even done a demo that we both felt was “okay.” It was Tedd who gave it an easy bossa nova feel and assembled just the right musicians to bring it to life. The day of the session, Rex Benincasa recorded all kinds of percussion tracks with all kinds of wonderful sounds for us to play around with afterward. I will always remember sitting with Tedd and engineer Scott Lehrer as they did the first mix, and how Tedd layered in those tracks from Rex for a subtle build that was like sprinkling fairy dust. (For example, listen to “The sandman has come…”)

Meanwhile, I had my own work to do. After Scott listened to my scratch vocals during the instrumental recording session, he encouraged me to go for a classic Brazilian bossa vocal sound and phrasing. He gave me examples from Sarah Vaughan, Roberta Sá and Elis & Tom. I went away and listened and practiced. And when I came back into the studio to do the final vocals, we could all hear the difference. Obrigado, Scott!

Words and Music by Ervin Drake
Terry Music, Songwriters Guild of America o/b/o Lindabet Music Inc. and Monkarsh Music

Arrangement by Tedd Firth

Celia Berk, vocals
Tedd Firth, piano

CELIA:
The story of this album really begins and ends with my friend Debbi Bush Whiting, daughter of Margaret Whiting and granddaughter of Richard Whiting. She had given me recordings of her mother’s appearances on a radio show, including Irving Berlin’s NOW IT CAN BE TOLD. The premise of that song is that the real story of a great romance has yet to be written. As I listened, I asked myself, “So what exactly can now be told?” And then I thought, “Oh, I’m going to do an album about love!” So I set out to find songs about the ways we try – successfully and unsuccessfully – to connect our heart to someone else’s.

A year later, Debbi sent me an email with the subject line “Now That I Have Everything.” It said, “Ervin Drake… Just was listening to Mom sing this… Thought of you… It’s a beautiful song… I hear you singing it.” I listened, and it was a true hidden gem by a great songwriter. And her mother’s recording with Hubert “Tex” Arnold was something more than great.

I instantly knew this would be the final song – of the sets I would do with pianist Sean Gough, and most definitely of the album. Now the story could be told!

Surprisingly, Tex couldn’t find his chart for the song. So I had their recording transcribed. And I even got to sing it with Tex at the piano for a Margaret Whiting Award event shortly before he died unexpectedly.

I gave the song to Tedd, and together we arrived at our own version. I asked Tedd if there was a place where we could tip our hat to Margaret and Tex’s recording. If you listen to the last phrase of theirs –and the last phrase of ours – you will hear Tedd do exactly that.

DEBBI BUSH WHITING:
Brava Celia Berk!!! She took this beautiful Ervin Drake song and totally made it her own. Margaret would be so happy with her rendition. Celia’s innate ability to draw one into her feeling the emotional depth of the material is an immensely refreshing experience.

Whatever gave my heart this song, I only know I am grateful for the collaborators, advisors and friends who helped me navigate the many twists and turns on the long road to this album:

Rex Benincasa
David Finck
Jay Leonhart
Matt Munisteri

Phyllis Berk, Chris Boecker, Ann Hampton Callaway, Jane Wilson Cathcart, Dick Connette, Roger Crane, Stanley Dorfman, Steve Doyle, Betsyann Faiella, Donald Feltham, Barbara Flood, Jeff Harnar, Doug Hinrichs, Beth Howlett, Brian Hurley, MP Kuo, Michael Lavine, Shari Lifland, Maria Miliotis, Ben Miller, Theresa Montgomery, Mark Nadler, Hsuan-Yu Pan, David Pearl, Rex Reed, William Riley, John Rogers, Keith Sabado, Sandy Sajous, Jane Schore, Joey Severini, Alan Wager, and William Baldwin Young.

Chris Benham for giving us safe harbor at Big Orange Sheep in the midst of the pandemic

Oscar Zambrano for his masterful mastering and friendship

Stefan Bucher for his elegant art direction; Helane Blumfield for her photography and creative eye; and Josh Okun for giving my music the best digital platform

Roger Schore for entrusting me with Bittersweet

Debbi Bush Whiting for suggesting Now That I Have Everything. We have done our best to honor what her mother Margaret Whiting and Hubert “Tex” Arnold did in their iconic recording

Sean Gough for his open-hearted willingness to share his musical world

Will Friedwald for his generous words and ongoing advice as this album took shape

———————————————————————

I am overjoyed to be working with Tedd Firth. His combination of musicianship and encouragement is not so very easy to find and never taken for granted.

And it doesn’t happen every day that you walk into someone’s recording studio and come out with the start of a creative partnership. Almost ten years later, Scott Lehrer still provides the space where I can safely keep challenging myself.

There is nothing more I can say…