The Magic of Richard Rodgers in the Hands of Denny Zeitlin on "With A Song in My Heart"

Denny Zeitlin- Exploring the Music of Richard Rodgers- With a Song in My Heart- Sunnyside

It's hard for me to get my head around how long it has been since I first heard  pianist Denny Zeitlin play live. It was November of 2001 when I had the privilege of catching him and his trio at the wonderful, but sadly now defunct, Kitano jazz club in the Kitano hotel off of Park Avenue in NYC. His playing was simply sublime, and his bandmates - the stalwart bassist Buster Williams and the effervescent drummer Matt Wilson- rose to the occasion with empathetic energy and joy.  Zeitlin's sensitivity and inventiveness made a lasting impression on me, and I continued to follow, look forward, and at times write about his subsequent releases.

Denny Zeitlin, Buster Williams and Matt Wilson at The Kitano November  2001

Earlier in the year of this performance, Zeitlin had released his spectacular solo album Labyrinth on Sunnyside Records, in the month of June. Solo piano albums have a special meaning to Zeitlin. He once said “Solo piano performance takes me back to my earliest roots, and allows for perhaps the most intensely personal musical statement.” While this was certainly his sentiment then, these days, at the age of eighty-seven, it is probably even more intensely true  today. His playing and creativity has certainly continued to wow, inspire and entertain over the passing years. This musical artist has always maintained a dual vocation as both a musician and as a clinical professor of psychiatry at University of California at San Francisco and in his private practice. This never kept him from still performing and recording. It started with his first release Cathexis, when he was first signed to Columbia Records by producing legend John Hammond in 1963. 

Zeitlin was born in Chicago, Illinois and relocated to the west coast in 1964 where he has resided in the San Francisco and the Marin county area ever since. Maintaining these two successful professions concurrently for close to sixty years reveal an enormous amount of the vitality, creativity and dedication that this man has maintained throughout his life. Some might call him a Renaissance Man of sorts, and just looking at his prolific recording history that might not be far from the truth.

Zeitlin's latest solo album Exploring The Music of Richard Rodgers-With a Song In My Heart , was released on June 6th of this year. It is his thirty-eighth recording and his sixteenth with Sunnyside Records. 

Listening to a Zeitlin album, especially his solo offerings, is always a challenge to write about. Words alone do not do  justice to the experience of being submerged while listening to the musical cornucopia that comes out of this artist's fertile mind. Perhaps the closest  metaphor I can come up with is to compare Zeitlin to a gourmet chef. He prepares each performance like a feast. He sets the table of the listener carefully, exploring musical themes-in this case the music of Richard Rodgers-one of the most important and successful composers of the twentieth century. He deconstructs familiar or sometimes not so familiar compositions. He extracts the essence and finds meaningful motifs that he can emphasis and embellish. He layers ideas, modulates the tonal possibilities, and exploits rhythmic changes to great effect. Like a skilled chef with his battery of seasonings, Zeitlin reinvents the mundane, magically reharmonizing the familiar into something that emerges as new and fresh.

Denny Zeitlin (photo credit unknown)

Zeitlin has travelled this path many times before. Previously he has done deep dives into the music of Wayne Shorter on his Early Wayne from 2014. In 2015, Zeitlin did a video of his Piedmont Piano concert Exploring Thelonious Monk. He followed that with his exploration of the music of Miles Davis on his Remembering Miles from 2016, not to mention his studies of the music of Gershwin and Strayhorn.

In each case, Zeitlin explore the composer's canon of music and rethinks it in his own mystical way. His artistry comes from his thorough familiarity with the material he presents and finding ways to see them and preform them in his own unique way. Zeitlin, was first exposed as a youth to Richard Rodgers music from hearing the music from the 1943 Broadway show Oklahoma!  

On The Music of Richard Rodgers-With a Song In My Heart, Zeitlin has mined twelve compositions from the Rodgers treasure chest, many unfamiliar. Half of this music was recorded in front an audience at the Piedmont Piano concert on December 13, 2019, with the remainder of the selections being recorded in a studio in November and December of the same year. 

The earliest composition on this album is the title track "With a Song in My Heart" that was first heard in the musical Spring Is Here 1929. Zeitlin takes this song, with it's noted feel of a love at first sight romance, and once delivered by Ella Fitzgerald in 1956, and plays it with conviction and sensitivity. 

The opener, "Falling in Love With You," another show song from The Boys from Syracuse from 1938, has been covered by artists as disparate as Frank Sinatra, Julie Andrews and The Supremes! Zeitlin explores the lost love theme by opening the music with his own exploratory intro. His touch can be light or majestic and his subtle change of tone and attack explores all the emotions from chagrin to soaring hope. He explores multiple rhythmic changes that raise the temperature and accelerate the heart beat. Just a wonderful capture of this man in the "flow" and the audience responds accordingly.

"I Don't Know What Time It Was"  from the musical Too Many Girls of 1938 vintage has been covered by Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Betty Carter and Cassandra Wilson, not to mention instrumentally by Charlie Parker and Brad Mehldau. Because the composition doesn't have a tonal center, but modulates between keys, it makes the song feel more mysterious. Zeitlin raises the bar by playing in a 7/4 time signature that adds yet another element to his interpretation of this classic. He alternates the pace and adds interest in his interesting harmonizing with his left hand. You can't help but marvel at the man's unpredictable ideas that he often comes up with on he fly. If you thought you knew this song, then you will find yourself surprised at how far out he can expand the paths that can be traveled within a composition.

"He Was Too Good To Me" is a Rodgers composition that was written  for a Broadway show in 1930, Simple Simon, and was somehow never used in the show. No worries, the moving ballad attracted it's own astute followers that took it as their own. Vocalists Natalie Cole and Chris Connor, as well as jazz artists from Chet Baker, Thad Jones and Shirley Horn all found this composition fertile ground. Zeitlin gets his turn exploring the themes of loss, grief and sorrow in his own inimitable way. His notes sometimes feel like they suspend themselves in the air on command. His tender touch is moving and draws you into the pathos of a lover's loss with empathy and warmth.

The album continues with the obscure "Johnny One Note"  from Babes in Arms, a 1937 show that depicts tale of an opera singer who could only sing one note. Despite his limitation, he would sing with such overpowering fervor that he was always upstaging his fellow cast members. Zeitlin plays a somewhat boisterous samba here. He simulates the opera singers audacious gusto. His left hand maintains the frantic buzz as his right hand explores the keyboard to its limits.

Zeitlin includes two compositions "Wait Till You See Her" and "Ev' rything I've Got" from the 1942 show By Jupiter, that featured Ray Bolger, who later became famous as the Scarecrow in movie The Wizard of Oz. 

"Wait Till You See Her" finds Zeitlin in his delicate ballad mode and in "Ev'rything I've Got," Zeitlin's rhythmic acuity and creativity is on display. He lights up the room with ascending and descending flights that pulls all the possibilities out of this song. He also delves into the piano body including string plucking and manipulating that adds a whole new dimension. 

In the studio portion of the album, Zeitlin draws on two compositions from South Pacific, the famous Rodgers and Hammerstein 1949 Broadway show and later the equally famous 1958 film that brought this music to another generation. The musical was based on the Tales of the South Pacific, a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by James Michener. The emotionally filled ballad "This Nearly Was Mine" was once made famous by Frank Sinatra. Zeitlin choses to use a 5/4 time signature on this version and his deft touch and gorgeous harmonic choices make this lament of love and loss pure magic. 

The comedy show I'd Rather Be Right from 1937 gave us the jazz standard "Have You Met Miss Jones." This gem has been a vehicle of expression since it's origin and been interpreted by such impressive artists as Art Tatum, Stan Getz, and Ahmad Jamal, as well as vocalists Anita O' Day, Tony Bennett and Mel Tormé. The chord modulations are said to have been precursors to what is known as Coltrane changes as used in his Giant Steps. With this imprimatur from a legion of jazz greats, its is no wonder why Zeitlin has chosen to take his turn at reimagining this classic. He doesn't disappoint. The pianist uses motifs that he expands upon and his facility across the keyboard continues to demonstrate a command that is only limited by his seemingly bottomless well of imagination.

Exploring the Music of Richard Rodgers- With a Song in My Heart- is a pure delight. Zeitlin continues to prove that the American songbook can still be a plentiful treasure trove of beauty and inspiration, and he defies the claim that it has become a worn out resource. When the canon is examined and played by a true piano master like Zeitlin, one who has never shied away from challenge, the sky can be the limit.