Arranger George Mesterhazy: The beat goes on PDF Print E-mail

That Paula West is steadily approaching the pantheon of great jazz and cabaret singers is beyond dispute. But anyone who has been following West's career for a few years will immediately recognize that for this go-round at the Rrazz Room she has a secret weapon: It's her pianist, bandleader and arranger, George Mesterhazy.

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There are few things traditional about this Hungarian-born musician, and that goes for his look - which is stubble-faced louche - as well as his sensibility, which is far off the track of today's academy-trained jazz experts. Mesterhazy, 55, is half "Hey, I'm just having fun backing up a singer; my real job is running a restaurant-inn in New Jersey" and half deadly serious about extracting every musical value possible out of every Paula West moment.
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Shirley Horn May The Music Never End PDF Print E-mail

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  1. Forget me
  2. If You Go Away
  3. Yesterday
  4. Take Love Easy
  5. Never Let Me Go
  6. Watch What Happens
  7. Ill Wind
  8. Maybe September
  9. Everything Must Change
  10. This Is All I Ask
  11. May The Music Never End
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    Paula West with the George Mesterhazy quartet PDF Print E-mail
    26paul_CA0.600“How does it feel?” The tone in which those four words are delivered is a critical factor in determining the psychic damage wrought by Bob Dylan’s musical missile, “Like a Rolling Stone.” When the jazz singer Paula West sang them at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel on Tuesday evening, she underplayed the composer’s crowing sarcasm and the song emerged in a softer light.
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