Great Barrington — Jazz guitarist and singer John Pizzarelli will appear at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center on December 16 with bassist Michael Karn and pianist Isaiah J. Thompson in support of John’s latest record, “Stage & Screen,” released last April by Palmetto Records.
John Pizzarelli has been making records since 1983, and they all feature his favorite tunes. But no matter how many records he makes, he is always left with songs that he is still champing at the bit to sing and play. “Stage & Screen” contains another batch of them, classic songs spanning nearly nine decades, all taken from Broadway musicals and Hollywood films. “In thinking about some of the songs that I really love to play,” Pizzarelli explains on his website, “it struck me how many of them come from either a Broadway show or from a movie. An idea like ‘Stage & Screen’ frees me to explore a wide range of songwriters and eras, and it continues to offer a wealth of new possibilities.”
The new record opens with a pair of songs from the 1925 musical “No, No, Nanette” (“I Want To Be Happy” and “Tea For Two”) and winds up in the 21st century with an authorized update to “I Love Betsy,” from Jason Robert Brown’s “Honeymoon in Vegas.” In between are songs by Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, Oscar Hammerstein II, Leonard Bernstein, Sammy Cahn, and Jule Styne, including “Too Close for Comfort,” from the 1956 musical “Mr. Wonderful,” and “As Time Goes By” from “Casablanca” with the seldom-sung last verse.
To call John Pizzarelli a great jazz musician is to sell him short. He is, in fact, “a rare entertainer of the old school,” according to The Seattle Times. Pizzarelli told Kyle Oleksiuk of the the New York City Jazz Record, “I grew up with my father Bucky Pizzarelli playing with people like Zoot Sims and Les Paul and Clark Terry and Slam Stewart and Hank Jones … That was where I came from, I came from that school of thought,” he said. And it is that school of thought that Pizzarelli brings to all his performances.
Listeners to public radio station WAMC are likely to be familiar with “Radio Deluxe,” the program Pizzarelli and his wife, singer Jessica Molasky, have produced since 2005 from their living room, featuring music from the Great American Songbook. (Saturdays, 2 p.m. – 4 p.m.)
Pizzarelli is also a producer of other artists’ records. He co-produced James Taylor’s album “American Standard,” which won a GRAMMY for “Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album” in 2020.
Hear the John Pizzarelli Trio at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, 14 Castle Street, Great Barrington, on December 16, at 8 p.m. Tickets: $39 – $89 (members receive $5 off each ticket) and $15 for ages 30 and under. For information and tickets, call (413) 528-0100 or visit Mahaiwe’s website.
