AJ Brown's Voice Of Love: sheer brilliance
BY VERNON DAVIDSON Executive editor-publications davidsonv@jamaicaobserver.com
Sunday, December 23, 2007
It's just over 40 minutes of sheer musical brilliance. And if, after you're through listening to AJ Brown's Voice Of Love, you are unable to name a favorite track, you can easily be forgiven. For each of the 10 songs on this set takes listeners through a range of emotions triggered by Brown's clear, crisp, powerful baritone and the accompanying strings, keyboard, acoustic and bass guitars, drums, horns, penny whistle, flute and bass flute.
Brown, easily one of the best voices to emerge from Jamaica, obviously put a lot of work into this project as his Italian on the opening track, Con Te Partiro (Time To Say Goodbye), the Italian operatic pop song, as well as on Franz Schubert's classic traditional Catholic and Eastern Orthodox prayer, Ave Maria, is perfect.
The liner notes describe Voice Of Love as a collection of 10 of the world's greatest love songs recorded and mixed at Cherry Beach Sound in Toronto, Canada and produced by Lance Anderson with Daphne Chin-Loy as executive producer. The 10 songs are some of the most recorded pieces ever by some of the world's greatest voices, among them Mario Lanza, Edie Fisher, Billy Ekstine, Oscar Peterson, Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, Perry Como, Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett.
Brown is both soothing and powerful on You Raise Me Up, the moving and inspirational piece done on the melody of the traditional Irish tune Londonderry Air, which is more popularly known for the song Danny Boy, first recorded in 1910. His interpretation of A Love Until The End Of Time gives him equal star billing to Placido Domingo and Maureen McGovern who wowed music lovers with their rendition some years ago. Lady Of Spain, the 1931 accordion song first made popular by Dick Contino in 1946 and later by American pop singer Eddie Fisher will get you dancing, while on The Loveliest Night Of The Year, Brown demonstrates incredible range, climbing easily to notes made for tenors. American tenor and movie star Mario Lanza, whose version of The Loveliest Night Of The Year is the best known, would no doubt be proud of Brown's rendition, as well as the Jamaican's handling of I'll Walk With God, which Lanza also recorded for the movie The Student Prince.
Brown, whose exploits on the local cabaret stage took him to the demanding schedules of Las Vegas, offers himself as a more than suitable candidate for Broadway with his delivery of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Charles Hart's The Music Of The Night, easily one of the most famous pieces from The Phantom of the Opera. The sad/sweet Without A Song, the 1929 classic penned by Edward Eliscu, Billy Rose and Vincent Youmans, completes the set which has catapulted Brown into the league of the world's top artistes.
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