What’s your musical guilty pleasure—the stuff you listen to after hours?
One of mine is Frank Sinatra, especially his Capitol years and the Nelson Riddle arrangements.
And lately I’ve been getting my fix listening to WNYC Jonathan Schwartz. You can listen online Sat. nights (also available via special stream Saturdays afternoons). He focuses on Sinatra in the second hour of the show, Saturday nights about 9 pm.
The former artistic director of Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series, Jonathan Schwartz was acknowledged by Sinatra himself to be his best-informed fan.
Schwartz plays recording sessions with rehearsal commentary (not sure where he gets all this archival material!) as well as recordings of Sinatra’s live performances, and compares versions and traces the development of Sinatra’s interpretations and arrangements.
For singers and instrumentalists—classical, jazz, what-have-you—listening to Sinatra is often a master class in phrasing, delivery, diction, timing.
Here’s the thing with guilty musical pleasures: whatever draws us often has great lessons to teach us.
For this week: Indulge your musical guilty pleasure and see what you can learn from it!
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