[JPL] Re: Fading Sounds of an Elegant Manhattan

[Jazz Promo Services]

> Wonderful performer Russ...I¹ve hd the pleasure to hear Daryl over the
> years...
> 
> thanks for this...I listened to her many times at the waldorf...
>>  
>> ----- Original Message -----
>>  
>> From:  Jazz  Promo Services <mailto:jazzpromo at earthlink.net>
>>  
>> To: jazzproglist at jazzweek.com
>>  
>> Sent: Sunday, May 04, 2008 8:52 AM
>>  
>> Subject: Fading Sounds of an Elegant  Manhattan
>>  
>> 
>> http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/05/03/nyregion/03waldorf.html?scp=1&sq=Daryl+S
>> herman&st=nyt 
>> <http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/05/03/nyregion/03waldorf.html?scp=1&amp;sq=Da
>> ryl+Sherman&amp;st=nyt>
>> 
>> 
>> May 3,  2008
>> MUSIC
>> Fading Sounds of  an Elegant Manhattan
>> 
>> By STEPHEN  HOLDEN
>> For the last 14 years, some of the most welcoming  sounds in Midtown
>> Manhattan have been the voice and piano of Daryl Sherman,  heard as you enter
>> the Waldorf-Astoria hotel at Park Avenue and 49th Street.  As you ascend the
>> green carpeted stairs to the lobby, her music invites you  into a world of
>> elegance where the spirit of Cole  Porter, a longtime resident of the
>> Waldorf, still hovers.
>> 
>> As  of Sunday evening, those sounds will be stilled. A few weeks ago, Ms.
>> Sherman  received word that for economic reasons her tenure at the cocktail
>> terrace  between the Empire and Hilton Rooms would end. Saturday and Sunday¹s
>> performances are four-hour laps, from 3:30 to 7:30 p.m.
>> 
>> Last year, the  Hilton hotel chain, which owns the Waldorf-Astoria, was sold
>> to the Blackstone  Group of investors. Such sales almost always entail
>> streamlining the  operations and cutting back expenses.
>> 
>> Ms. Sherman is one the very last  and finest of a vanishing breed of
>> singer-pianists who used to hold forth in  the lobbies of luxury hotels in
>> Manhattan. At the end of last year, the Cafe  Pierre in the Pierre hotel was
>> closed for renovation, ending the two-decade  engagement of its longtime
>> musical fixture, Kathleen Landis. The Waldorf still  has live piano music in
>> Peacock Alley on the way to the hotel¹s Lexington  Avenue entrance, but that
>> serves as ambient background tinkling.
>> 
>> Ms.  Sherman, an effervescent 50-something woman, makes music suited to the
>> foreground as well the background. The piano she has played is not any old
>> keyboard but Cole Porter¹s piano, a brown, hand-painted midsize Steinway
>> grand  adorned with decorative scrolls and courtly, bewigged dancing
>> figures.
>> 
>> Constructed in 1907, it was presented by the hotel in 1945 to  Porter, who
>> had already lived there for six years; it was moved to the lobby  after his
>> death in 1964. It is an impressive instrument, especially in the  lower
>> register, whose resonance Ms. Sherman sometimes demonstrates to patrons
>> sipping tea (there is a full tea service in the afternoon) or  cocktails.
>> 
>> If you spent enough hours on the terrace listening to her  play, sing, and
>> spin anecdotes from her storehouse of musical lore, sooner or  later you
>> might absorb most of the history of American popular  song.
>> 
>> Introducing Porter¹s perennially requested ³Night and Day² early  Friday
>> evening, she remarked, ³This is not me playing ‹ this is Cole Porter¹s
>> spirit playing by Ouija board.² After finishing the instrumental
>> introduction,  she sang the rest of the song, then smiled and said, ³That was
>> me, just so  you¹ll know.²
>> 
>> Songs from the Porter musicals ³The New Yorkers² and  ³Jubilee² followed, as
>> well as her own song, ³Welcome to Manhattan,² which she  described as ³a
>> contemporary song that sounds like a 30s song,² and it does.  ³The 30s are my
>> decade ‹ Depression,² she joked.
>> 
>> A jazz baby who plays  a buoyant stride piano, Ms. Sherman grew up in
>> Woonsocket, R.I., the daughter  of the jazz trombonist Sammy Sherman, who
>> took her to jam sessions as a child.  In 1974, three years after graduating
>> from the  University of Rhode Island, she moved to New York and began
>> performing in Manhattan jazz clubs, both as a soloist and in small ensembles.
>> She has many distinguished jazz mentors, most notably the trumpet player Dick
>> Sudhalter, who introduced her to the classics of the  Bing Crosby-Paul
>> Whiteman era.
>> 
>> The sunny, steadily swinging  style of Mildred Bailey is a particularly
>> strong influence. Her 1999 album,  ³Celebrating Mildred Bailey and Red Norvo²
>> (Audiophile) pays her homage, and  Ms. Sherman hopes someday to honor Ms.
>> Bailey in a one-woman music-theater  piece. Ms. Sherman¹s newest album, ³New
>> Orleans² (Audiophile), is her response to Hurricane Katrina.
>> 
>> Vocally, Ms.  Sherman is frequently compared to Blossom Dearie, who has a
>> similarly light  touch and sly playfulness, but Ms. Sherman¹s voice is fuller
>> with a sweet  twirling vibrato. If her singing evokes pleasure and
>> playfulness, it isn¹t all  sunshine and flowers. Her rendition of a song
>> associated with Ms. Bailey, the  Carl Sigman-Duke Ellington ballad ³All Too
>> Soon,² was sultry and wistful Friday.
>> 
>> Some of the best advice about  singing she ever received, she recalled, was
>> from the great jazz interpreter  Sylvia Syms, who died in 1992: ³Stop
>> listening to the sound of your own voice  and find the crux of the song and
>> work back from that.²
>> 
>> Ms. Sherman has  a chin-up attitude about the future. ³I¹ve been very lucky,²
>> she emphasized,  ³and I¹m grateful for the last 14 years.² Then she giggled.
>> ³Now all I have to  do is find a rich man to buy the hotel and pay for a
>> facelift when I  really need  it.²
>> 
>> 
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>