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A Wonderful World
Artist(s) : Tony Bennett, k.d. lang
List Price : $11.98 USD
Your Price : $10.99 USD
ProductGroup: Music
Release Date : 2002-11-05
Studio : Sony
Label : Sony
Avg. Customer Rating :  (71 reviews)
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Reviews
Customer Reviews for A Wonderful World
Wonderful
Rating:
I love the duet concept records and I am a big k.d. Lang fan and when I heard this record was coming out I was very excited. A wonderful combination of voices singing classics, and the title track makes this record perfect. I was not a big Tony Bennett fan beforehand, but became one because of this.
Customer Reviews for A Wonderful World Cd
The Music Stays With Us
Rating:
"A Wonderful World,"(2002), a collection of duets by Tony Bennett and K.D. Lang, to songs inspired by the legendary New Orleans trumpeter Louis Armstrong, included "What a Wonderful World," "Exactly Like You," and "You Can Depend on Me." It was produced by the near-legendary T Bone Burnett, and includes trumpet work by Scott Hamilton. Of course, in 2002, the New York-born crooner was 76 years old; and his voice was not what it once was: but still, the embers of it, with its liquidity, smoothness, intonation and phrasing are enough to cast his light upon the world. Critic Howard Garwood wrote of him, "He has the face you'd want on your neighborhood bar owner - seamed, rumpled, and infinitely kind.... It's the face of a man who has seen life and triumphed, and who proclaims his joy of living through one of the best sets of pipes in the business."
And as for K.D. Lang's voice, 2002 found it still in top form. It's a thing of unearthly, silken beauty, a voice that comes along only once in a generation: in her case, from Alberta, Canada. I remember seeing her once on late night television, early in her career, wearing the silliest cowgirl outfit and hopping up and down, and wishing I could tell her that with her voice, she didn't need to hop, she could leave that to Herman's Hermits. Of course, I couldn't, but she seems to have figured it out, anyway.
The title song, as done by this pair, boasts all the colors of the rainbow. And some of the quieter ballads are still waters running deep, indeed. Just listen, to say, "La Vie En Rose," or "If We Never Meet Again."
I am lucky enough to have seen this pair present this repertory in person, at New York's Radio City Music Hall, in the most striking of circumstances, to wit: late September, 2001, about two weeks after the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Center, and so much of downtown Manhattan. I already had my ticket, and anxiously watched the paper to see if they would keep the date: they did, and so did I. So did most of the ticket holders, I believe: there were empty seats, but not that many. Took ages to get through security, of course. You can believe that emotions ran high in that theater, on stage and in the audience: you could describe it as a love-in. And as for the music that came from that stage - it was simply blessed, and unforgettable. Lucky for all of us, the music, so evanescent in live performance, stays with us on this cd.
Editorial Reviews for A Wonderful World Audio Cd
Amazon.com
Never mind the project's odd couple, "He's got a girlfriend; so does she" marketing shuck. This is a musical love affair in all its splendor. Produced by the seemingly chameleonic producer T Bone Burnett (who previously revived traditional bluegrass with spectacular success on O Brother, Where Art Thou?), the septuagenarian legend and his unlikely contemporary foil affectionately court a dozen songs from the Louis Armstrong repertoire with the warmth and natural grace that have been a deceptively effortless Bennett trademark for 50-plus years. The pair kick proceedings off with a playful, irony-free "Exactly Like You," then perform a tender vocal waltz across both the ages and the masterful, sympathetic orchestrations of the late Peter Matz, one of Bennett's longtime collaborators. But it's on the more melancholy performances, like "If We Never Meet Again," "I'm Confessin'," and the Armstrong perennials "Wonderful World" and "Lucky Old Sun," that the pair tap into something akin to timeless musical telepathy. Her own talents hardly in need of burnishing, lang invests the project with some gratifying new smokiness and is rewarded with a postgraduate course in saloon singing for the ages. It's an album that begs the best kind of question: When do we get an encore? --Jerry McCulley
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