Blame Those Gershwins

Cabaret songs with lush jazz harmonies in a rich variety of musical styles, from ballad to swing, from funky to theatrical. This collection of Steve Sweeting’s songs centers around his long-time collaboration with Boston cabaret artist, Will McMillan. The CD features three songs the pair wrote together in the mid-90s: Stuff, Questions and Let’s Go to the River. The title track, Blame Those Gershwins with words and lyrics by Sweeting, was written as a tour-de-force meditation on the wonderfully inescapable influence of America’s premier fraternal songwriters of the 1930s. It contains so many inside references, both lyrical and musical, to the Great American Songbook, you’ll lose count. Let It All Go, also written in the 1990s, has a James Taylor pop feel to it. Bounce to the Wave is a funky ode to the thrill of dancing with a partner and the lyricist here is Betina Hershey who conceived the song as part of a dance concert she choreographed in 2006. I Carry Your Heart was originally commissioned as a 4-part a cappella choral piece for a Chinese national choral competition in 2008 while Sweeting lived in Shanghai, China. Setting the lyrics of ee cummings first published poem, it was a silver medal winner. It is part art-song, part cabaret song, and 100% influenced by the jazz and gospel influences that permeate much of Sweeting’s writing. What Am I Doing Alone is a torch song in which you can almost hear a jazz saxophone responding to each vocal phrase.