Brownstein: Serial jazz fest performer Holly Cole returns to make magic and melt hearts
If one were to be entirely selfish, it would be simply sublime to catch Holly Cole in a minimalist setting, like some dimly lit piano bar, to perform cuts from her recently released 13th album, Dark Moon, an alluring trip down memory lane, in which she covers an array of unexpected tunes rarely covered these days.
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Among the album's 11 tracks are Comin' Back to Me, made famous by Jefferson Airplane's Marty Balin in 1967; Walk Away Renée, released by the Left Banke in 1966; Henry Mancini/Johnny Mercer's 1961 classic Moon River, immortalized by Andy Williams among many others; and the title track Dark Moon, recorded by Bonnie Guitar in 1957.
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Cole, as she is wont to do, brings a soothing, sultry sound to these tunes, regardless of the setting. A sweet kind of sadness, if you will.
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And no doubt that Cole will be able to work her magic once again when she plays the Montreal International Jazz Festival, July 2 at Théâtre Jean-Duceppe. An expected sell-out crowd of the venue's nearly 800-seat capacity at this Place des Arts venue would certainly provide more revenue relief for a performer than would an audience in the dozens at a piano bar, no matter how intimate the setting.
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'The show will be pared down a little. For instance, there will be no drums, and if you're going to pick something to remove from your band that's going to make the most significant difference in terms of it being an intimate show, that's the drums,' Cole says in a phone interview from her Toronto home.
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Cole may have also set a record of sorts for including three different 'moon' tunes on one album. The third is No Moon at All, a 1947 jazz standard first recorded by Doris Day and more recently by Seth MacFarlane – yes, the very same Family Guy-creator dude in his lesser-known but astonishing Sinatra-like crooner mode.
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Cole's obsession with the moon is hardly an accident.
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'The moon is my muse,' Cole says. 'It has been since I was a child. I've always been fascinated. I was about 3 or 4 in Halifax where I grew up and I first saw it at night. I had woken up in the middle of the night with this horrible croup cough. My mom crushed up some aspirin in canned peaches so I would eat it. And then my dad wrapped me up in a bunch of blankets and took me outside on his shoulders. That was the first time I saw the moon. I was mesmerized. How was it possible everything could be so dark, except the moon? It blew my mind! When I came home from that, I thought I had the best secret ever.'
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'The howling at the moon only came later,' Cole jokes.
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