Today for Bistro Bits, I’m having a look at two recent album releases, both of which fall into the “jazz” bucket.

But circumstances make these two albums a bit different from, say, the ones I discussed in the previous installment of Bistro Bits. John Minnock’s new album of David Shire music was released after Minnock’s death earlier this year. April Aloisio and Joanie Pallatto’s new project is a compilation album, with a pair of brand-new tracks complementing material from previous releases.

Both albums have their own attractions, but the posthumously released collection is the one that stood out for me.

A Different Riff: Minnock Sings Shire—John Minnock

When a singer’s album of music is released after the singer’s passing, its content will likely take on a poignancy it wouldn’t have if the artist were still with us. Knowledge of the artist’s death should not in theory, I suppose, affect how we hear the songs. But it does. It just does.

Vocalist John Minnock passed away in early 2024, a few weeks before the scheduled release of A Different Riff: Minnock Sings Shire (an album of songs by composer Shire, who was also a co-producer on the project). It’s definitely hard to ignore the unintended irony (and awkwardness) of the presence of songs with titles like “What About Today?” and “Starting Here, Starting Now.”

So, thinking about—and writing about—this album is kind of tricky. Still, whatever meanings the songs may take on because of the extraneous factor of human mortality, A Different Riff is a highly satisfying album from an accomplished and versatile talent. There are only ten tracks with vocals on this album (plus an instrumental reprise of one of them: “With You I’m Born Again,” which ends the album). Throughout, Minnock gives us a display of the many things his voice was capable of. Sometimes that voice is sweet—and pristinely clear. At other times, it takes on a Tom Waits–like growl, inviting us to revel in the sandpapery texture.

The singer opens the album with “What About Today?” (lyric by Richard Maltby, Jr.), a song that has fascinated me for decades—and one that I wrote about (and interviewed David Shire about) in a 2022 “Cabaret Setlist” article on this site. How I wish that, back then, I’d had this Minnock version to compare with other renditions of the song.  His take is totally unlike the pulsing, fiery Barbra Streisand original from 1969 or the ferocious, I-will-come-down-from-this-stage-and-devour-you turn that Shirley Bassey later gave the song. Minnock’s version opens with his forlorn voice adrift in a swirl of drums and crashing cymbals (and a lonely soprano saxophone played by Dave Liebman). Minnock seems to be seeking the shape of a rhythm in the percussive maelstrom. He plows through the song, and whenever he reaches the bridge (“Till Nirvana comes, what about today?”), he grasps for that beat, but it inevitably slips away again, letting the track end with the chaotic swirl slowly dying out. Has anyone else ever sung this song in such an unexpected yet entirely valid, even illuminating way?

The post-breakup song “I Don’t Remember Christmas” (Maltby lyric, again) starts in quiet, measured melancholy and then takes on a faster pace and some angry sputtering, with the last line (“I don’t remember you”) shouted. The singer takes a fairly conventional approach on the early Maltby & Shire ballad “Autumn,” his voice expressing striking vulnerability on certain phrases (“I can feel the frost now…” or “warm summer laughter…”). “A Different Riff” has both music and lyric by Shire. This title track highlights the boisterous comedic sensibility of the singer along with the wit of the songwriter.

Some tracks in the collection have fewer interpretive surprises than the ones I’ve highlighted above but are still quite listenable. Among them is the previously mentioned “With You I’m Born Again” (lyric by Carol Conners), performed as a duet with Deborah Lippmann (who, inexplicably, is not credited in the CD packaging).

For me, the crowning achievement of the album is “Only When I Laugh”—the title track from the 1981 film version of Neil Simon’s play The Gingerbread Lady. This is another break-up song, and a tart and sardonic one (“It was a minor operation, I pulled through. / I opened up my life and took out you”). The va-va-voom arrangement on this track seems to throw the listener into the squalor of a raucous strip club in the late 1950s or early 1960s: the kind of sordid joint associated with the hardscrabble career of Lenny Bruce. The gravel in Minnock’s voice gives the bumpy-grindy song just the right texture. And he delivers a beautifully sustained final note.

Minnock and Shire’s supporting players on this project deserve special attention, starting with Liebman (album co-producer and sax player). Sean Mason (whose album with Catherine Russell I wrote about glowingly in the previous Bistro Bits column) is commanding at the piano. (His solo on “Autumn” is especially lovely.) Mark Lewandowski is bassist (getting a workout on “Back on Base”—with yet another lyric by Maltby). And Pablo Eluchans is the drummer who creates all that glorious kaleidoscopic racket on “What About Today?”

Thank you, John Minnock, for this final collection of songs, styled with such care and affection.

A Different Riff: Minnock Sings Shire. Dot Time Records (2024). Produced by John Minnock with David Shire and Dave Liebman, co-producers.

April & Joanie Sing—April Aloisio and Joanie Pallatto

Singers April Aloisio and Joanie Pallatto have recorded music together intermittently for close to four decades. Now their collaborative journey is highlighted in April & Joanie Sing!, a compilation album with tracks going back to 1986. Whether they’re harmonizing or singing in unison, their avidity and professionalism shine through on this project.

The album certainly demonstrates the pair’s versatility. While several tracks have a Brazilian tinge, there are songs from an array of genres. Porgy and Bess’s “It Ain’t Necessarily So” (George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin, Dubose Heyward) is built around a salsa sound. “Live!” (Pallatto, Bradley Parker-Sparrow) is an energy-charged, vocalese-y sprint that ends abruptly when it slams against a wall of silence. There’s even a holiday song, King Fleming’s “Have a Merry Christmas” which sounds as though the arrangement might have been written by Dave Brubeck.

Yes, versatility is a good thing. But, through no fault of their own, compilation albums can sometimes seem like grab bags, and that’s true of this album. It’s not the kind of coherent album that you’d likely put into service as background music at a dinner party. Rather, it’s a handy resource you can use when you’re looking for a particular track from these artists.

On one featured song, the voices of April and Joanie play only a supporting role. This is the quirky “Simone,” sung by the late Bob Dorough, who graces it with raspy and exuberant snaps, crackles, and pops, along with some flinty consonants. All of this makes him sound drunk on love (and maybe something else). The song seems to have been included here because Aloisio and Pallatto sing some not-especially-memorable background vocals. (To be fair, Pallatto also wrote the song’s lyric, which is paired with a melody by Frank Foster.) 

My favorite number on this album is a 1986 cover of Michael Franks’s “Antonio’s Song (The Rainbow),” with lyrics that are eerie, mysterious, and shot through with a nagging sense of dread (“The vulture that circles Rio hangs in this L.A. sky”). Aloisio and Pallatto’s harmonizing is especially effective on Franks’s melancholic melody with its bossa nova pulse. An ill breeze (if not a full ill wind) wafts through the song. But what truly makes the track exciting is its sudden, lavish, and—frankly—violent instrumental coda for strings, which follows on the heels of the quiet, unassuming body of the song. This “segue” (composed, conducted, and arranged by Clifford (Cliff) Colnot, sounds like something film composer Bernard Herrmann might have come up with for the soundtrack of an Alfred Hitchcock thriller in the late 1950s or early 1960s.

Completists who have already collected the recordings of Aloisio and Pallatto over the years will be especially happy with two newly recorded cuts: “I Feel Free” (Peter Brown and Jack Bruce) and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” (George Harrison). Of the two, I was much more taken with the duo’s take on the Beatles tune (on which they get fine assistance from guitarist Fareed Haque). This track has a persistent, haunting quality: one likely to awaken some formidable earworms.

April and Joanie Sing! April Aloisio and Joanie Pallatto. Southport (2024). Produced by April Aloisio, Joanie Pallatto and Bradley Parker-Sparrow.

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