Thomas Allen, Stephen Higgins & Lucy Crowe – September Songs (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Thomas Allen, Stephen Higgins & Lucy Crowe – September Songs (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 53:31 minutes | 925 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Champs Hill Records

Sir Thomas Allen is an established star of great opera house around the world with a huge repertoire – with fifty roles at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden alone – who has now recorded something comp letely different for Champs Hill Records. September Songs is a chance to explore songs he grew up with, loved then and loves still, but repertoire that’s not usually associated with him, the golden age of Broadway and Hollywood with its melodic beauty, lyrical inventiveness and emotional directness. Allen has always hankered to ‘give it a go’ and to explore songs by the likes of George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern and Kurt Weill.

While UK baritone Thomas Allen is one of the most sought-after stars on the international lyrical scene, with about 50 major roles under his belt, he isn’t too proud to take on less prestigious genres, and not only within the world of opera: but also Broadway and Hollywood numbers from the 1940s onwards. Here he walks a tightrope between “serious music” and jazz, revue and musical, operetta and show tunes. George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern and Kurt Weill, (the New York Weill, not the Berlin Weill, there’s a world of difference).

According to Allen, who sees no difference between the world of lyrical art on the one hand, and Hollywood and the Broadway stage on the other, “these songs are every bit the equal of the standard repertoire that we sing, and one must find the way of singing them. there’s an intimacy to so many of them that, in these simple versions for voice and piano, I know I have to try to capture.” And capture them he does, to share with us alongside Stephen Higgins on piano, and Lucy Crowe coming in for a couple of songs (herself a specialist in baroque opera, not to mention Richard Strauss and Janáček). And how the genres mix and collide… As for the album’s title, it borrows from Weill’s September Song, from the 1938 Broadway musical Knickerbocker Holiday: Weill had moved to New York in 1935 for sad reasons that are all too well-known.

Tracklist:
1-01. Lucy Crowe, Stephen Higgins & Thomas Allen – You’re Just in Love (02:33)
1-02. Stephen Higgins & Thomas Allen – They Didn’t Believe Me (02:53)
1-03. Stephen Higgins & Thomas Allen – My Ship (02:58)
1-04. Stephen Higgins & Thomas Allen – All The Things You Are (03:08)
1-05. Stephen Higgins & Thomas Allen – Someone to Watch Over Me (03:37)
1-06. Stephen Higgins & Thomas Allen – Just One of Those Things (02:45)
1-07. Stephen Higgins & Thomas Allen – The Folks Who Live on the Hill (03:11)
1-08. Stephen Higgins & Thomas Allen – Come Home Joe (03:18)
1-09. Stephen Higgins & Thomas Allen – Miss Otis Regrets (02:26)
1-10. Stephen Higgins & Thomas Allen – The Good Life (02:14)
1-11. Lucy Crowe, Stephen Higgins & Thomas Allen – I Remember It Well (02:51)
1-12. Stephen Higgins & Thomas Allen – Our Love is Here to Stay (03:49)
1-13. Stephen Higgins & Thomas Allen – One For My Baby (04:38)
1-14. Stephen Higgins & Thomas Allen – Autumn Leaves (02:56)
1-15. Stephen Higgins & Thomas Allen – September Song (04:01)
1-16. Lucy Crowe, Stephen Higgins & Thomas Allen – Some Other Time (03:36)
1-17. Stephen Higgins & Thomas Allen – Greeting (02:29)

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