John Pizzarelli - Stage & Screen (2023) [Hi-Res]

I've been making "records" as a leader for 40 years as of 2023.
They have been in all different iterations and themes.

In the past few years, having gone back to smaller group recordings, I've made my way back to what I like best...the dreamless trio and to a theme I haven't explored before-Stage and Screen, music from the Broadway stage and the movies.

In putting together my latest trio, Mike Karn on double bass and Isaiah J Thompson on piano, I looked for a new repertoire of songs for us to learn together aside from the things I've played with my groups over a 33 year period. I discovered that this new set of songs had the theater or the moving picture in common.

In this first semi-post-covid recording for me, it was great to arrange for this group and explore the strengths of each player and come up with some exciting things for us to play.

It was also nice to play some instrumentals amongst the vocal selections. I am particularly fond of the "Oklahoma Suite." As for the vocal selections, I was happy to include "I Love Betsy", from the Broadway show Honeymoon in Vegas written by Jason Robert Brown and "Coffee in a Cardboard Cup" by Kander and Ebb from 70 Girls 70.

Along with some great standards like "Tea for Two" and "Just in Time" (with its seldom heard verse) those tunes rounded out a restorative time in the studio. It was great getting back to work with musicians I truly admire and working together towards a great end. I cannot say enough about the contributions of Isaiah and Mike, our engineer Bill Moss and my wife and co-producer Jessica Molaskey.

It was nice to breathe again together and take musical chances, hear playbacks and make mistakes and challenge each other. I think all of that comes through on this release and I hope you'll enjoy listening to it as much as we did making it.