No Training Wheels Necessary

Diana Krall
From This Moment On
Verve

The Clayton–Hamilton Jazz Orchestra doesn't split the difference between Billy May and Nelson Riddle so much as aggregate the virtues of each, but they're no more useful than May and Riddle without a commanding singer. And Krall, who's always been able to put over a song, exerts the necessary authority. And if songs like "Come Dance With Me" and "It Could Happen to You" invite Sinatra comparisons, she's up for that too. A MINUS

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• Ignacio Berroa
• Warren Vache
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Bucky Pizzarelli
5 for Freddie: Bucky's Tribute to Freddie Green
Arbors

The rhythm section tracks Basie's legends well enough—Mickey Roker for Jo Jones, Jay Leonhart for Walter Page, John Bunch for the Count—and Pizzarelli can certainly keep the engine humming. But Green was famous for never taking a solo, which leaves the guitarist in need of someone else for the spotlight. Enter Warren Vaché as Sweets Edison, even lighter on cornet, just enough voice to focus these old swing warhorses, and totally at home. A MINUS

DUD OF THE MONTH

Warren Vaché and the Scottish Ensemble
Don't Look Back
Arbors

Fronting a phalanx of strings has been a stock dream of virtuosos since before Charlie Parker and Coleman Hawkins, but few have made anything interesting out of the opportunity—two exceptions are Stan Getz's Focus, because of the futurist strings, and Art Pepper's Winter Moon, in spite of them. Vaché might have fared relatively well here—as he has in such intimate settings as his Bill Charlap duet 2Gether—but the 12-strong, baroque-rooted Scottish Ensemble is dead weight. B MINUS

Additional Consumer News

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