Dawn Upshaw Sings Vernon Duke  (Audio CD) 
by Dawn Upshaw

In interviews, Dawn Upshaw has said her sound on this album focuses on getting back to "the message" the song conveys, losing the obsession with physiology and mechanical precision. She sings on the consonants; she hits some explosive notes; she slides around. And the effect is wonderful. Sometimes even enthralling, as in "Water Under the Bridge", as her voice and the music and the words all merge into a shimmery liquid, or "Remember or Forget", whose lovely orchestration presents, with its alpine range of emotional expression, a challenge Dawn gracefully surmounts.

Vernon Duke gives Dawn's voice a chance for expression in a way few "popular" pieces can. Some of the easiest to relate to, like "Round About", contain sections of vocal skips that would raise the hairs of a Lotte Lenya; Dawn gives "Swattin' the Fly" the difficult, intense patience it needs to be effective. It's no accident that few songs besides "Autumn in New York" and "April in Paris"--the only Duke works remembered today--stay in one key for long or have hummable melodies. (Not too hummable, in fact.)

Again: if there was any doubt that Dawn is the most deservedly successful of the classical-to-popular transplants, this album lays it to rest. She moves in this uncharted territory infinitely more surely than Kiri Te Kanawa trying to sing standard Gershwin fare even with fifty years of interpretation to fall back on. This album, with its surface attractions and deep-felt rewards, may be the biggest resuscitation of an unjustly underperformed work since Sorrowful Songs.