Live to Love

After 2011s It Happens Quietly, devoted to her late father John Dankworths favourites, Live to Love – which vocalist Jacqui Dankworth is touring around the UK until December – is a return to her broader, more pop and gospel-inclusive agenda. Dankworth is just as subtle as on It Happens Quietly, but delivers some determinedly personal lyrics here with a renewed clarity and aplomb. Devoted to the power of love, her originals on loves enemies (like violence and greed, as on the anthemic Malala or the eventually gospelly We Do Need Love) are stronger musically than lyrically. But the reverential All Is Quiet (one of three guest spots for the Brodsky String Quartet) and keyboardist Charlie Woods swinging Simple As are haunting and hip, respectively, while Donny Hathaways Someday Well All Be Free is reflectively soulful and Wayne Shorters Palladium rhythmically bewitching. However, it is I Took Your Hand, featuring the Brodskys and an alternately soaring and sonorous Dankworth on Lorraine Feathers lyrics to an Enrico Pieranunzi melody, that is the standout.