You Are There--Poignant Johnny Mandel Song. I have already posted two Johnny Mandel songs earlier in this blog. " Emily" and " Where Do You Start." All Mandel songs have the sophistication and harmonic sensibility we usually associate with older writers like Richard Rodgers, Cole Porter, George Geshwin , Vernon Duke and Harold Arlen. His work compares quite well with the " Master" as heretical as that may be for some listeners.
" You are There" with lyrics by Dave Frishberg, a composer and pianist himself is a tender, reflective song in which the singer imagines that someone now departed is suddenly in the house " When the kettles on for tea and an old familiar feeling settles over me, and it's your face I see, and I believe that you are there." The very emotional nature of these thoughts gradually rise in intensity only to subside and then rise again. The song ends with " There's Just One Thing to do---pretend the dream is true.....and tell myself that you are there."
Jenness and Velsey in" The American Popular Song" The Second Half-Century" believe that " It is one of the greatest endings we know; the song as a whole is, we dare to say " sublime."
Stacy Kent, a highly regraded American cabaret singer performs the song with just a piano accompaniment in just the way you would hear it sung ina small cabaret setting with an attentive and knowledgeable audience.
The essence of many songs can be best experienced in such an intimate setting where the singer explores the lyrics with great attention to diction and phrasing and a minimum of diva-like grandeur.
LINK http://youtu.be/AIC27jrqs3Q
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