Regina Carter 'Ill Be Seeing You: A Sentimental Journey' album

On Tuesday, June 13, 2006, violinist Regina Carter will release I'll Be Seeing You: A Sentimental Journey. The album is a tribute to her late mother, Grace Carter, one of the primary influences in her life, music, and career.

The repertoire features a range of titles dating mostly from the 1920s through the 1940s. The album includes tunes by Rogers and Hart and Duke Ellington, as well as a tender new ballad by Carter.

The classics on the album were some of Carter’s mother’s favorite songs. With effervescent arrangements featuring dare-devilishly spontaneous improvisations and interplay between Carter and her bandmates, I’ll Be Seeing You is a feel-good foray into the joys of small-group swing and classic mid-century songs.

For this album, Carter is joined by Xavier Davis on piano, Matthew Parrish on bass, and Alvester Garnett on drums, and her special guests are vocalists Dee Dee Bridgewater and Carla Cook, Paquito D’Rivera on clarinet, and Gil Goldstein on accordion.

I’ll Be Seeing You instantly captivates from the album’s opener, “Anitra’s Dance”, by classical composer Edvard Grieg, in which Carter and her violin swing mightily, in the footsteps of John Kirby’s 1939 jazz treatment (and Duke Ellington’s much later one). The brilliant unison interplay of Carter’s violin, Gil Goldstein’s accordion, and Paquito D’Rivera’s clarinet vividly establishes the album’s period feeling. This line-up continues in a high-octane “Little Brown Jug”, featuring more dazzling passages and playful solos from the three. Throughout the album, Carter’s stand-out rhythm section is unfailingly inventive, nuanced and hard-swinging.

The irrepressible Dee Dee Bridgewater, arguably the greatest exponent of scat singing today, is featured on a rollicking time-capsule vocal on the Yiddish tune that became an Andrews Sisters hit, “Bei Mir Bist Du Shöen,” with an arrangement by the album’s producer John Clayton showcasing virtuoso playing from Carter, Goldtstein, and D’Rivera . Bridgewater also performs the Rogers and Hart gem “This Can’t Be Love”, and scats in exuberant call-and-response to the band.

Carter’s fellow-Detroiter, Carla Cook, one of the today’s most accomplished jazz vocalists, turns in stand-out performances on “You Took Advantage of Me”, the W. C. Handy classic “St. Louis Blues”, and an elegant “There’s a Small Hotel.”

Carter has been hailed by The Wall Street Journal as “one of jazz’s most impressive musicians [with] dazzling solos [and] an impressive and diverse resume”. The Los Angeles Times called her soloing “extraordinary, bursting with joyous swing” and DownBeat asserted “you can hear the inspired passion in her virtuosity”. This has never been more true than on I’ll Be Seeing You as Carter scales new heights of spontaneity and creative soloing. The CD includes the Ella Fitzgerald standard “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” and the beautiful waltz-ballad “Blue Rose” (Duke Ellington’s composition for Rosemary Clooney), and a haunting arrangement of “Sentimental Journey” for violin, bass, and clarinet. The album closes with a passionately tender “I’ll Be Seeing You” in a dream-like arrangement by Gil Goldstein.

On her previous recording, Paganini: After a Dream, Carter made history as the first jazz violinist ever to play and record on Paganini’s historic Guarneri violin, receiving accolades for her effortless melding of classical and jazz idioms. In remembering her mother, Regina Carter recalls, with unfettered swing and virtuoso abandon, the joys of a classic era in American music.

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Regina Carter - Ill Be Seeing You: A Sentimental Journey