Tunes on Tuesday: Curious Weather
Why this tune? This week’s tune started in a lyric writing class with Marcy Heisler, an award-winning writer and performer. She and her writing partner Zina Goldrich are responsible for many musical theater and cabaret works including “Taylor, The Latte Boy,” which you’re likely to hear at cabaret revues across the country. We all came…
Tunes on Tuesday: Just the Two of Us
Why this tune? This week’s tune is the product of a dream team of musical talent that crafted a #2 hit single and a standard of the R&B repertoire. “Just the Two of Us” was written by Bill Withers, William Salter, and Ralph MacDonald, and recorded by Grover Washington Jr. and Bill Withers for Washington’s…
Tunes on Tuesday: Lost In the Words
Why this tune? This week’s tune is the first draft of a new song, inspired by a songwriting session with Peter Eldridge hosted by JazzVoice.com. Peter suggested using a rhythm track as a starting point for a new song, recommending the fine selections in the Drumgenius app. I found the phrase “lost in the words” on my song ideas…
Tunes on Tuesday: People Make The World Go Round
Why this tune? I was reacquainted with this week’s tune last week when vocalist Venus Dodson included it in the set list we’re performing this month on St. Croix. “People Make The World Go Round” is a classic of the 1970s Philadelphia soul scene written by Thom Bell and Linda Creed. It was a top-30…
Tunes on Tuesday: Bend Don’t Break
Why this tune? Our hearts go out to the people of the Caribbean recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Melissa, the strongest hurricane ever to hit Jamaica and one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record. After the storm, we came across this Facebook post from Josh Morgerman, describing how he found inspiration from a…
Tunes on Tuesday: The Gentle Rain
Why this tune? This week’s tune “The Gentle Rain” is a gentle bossa nova composed by Luiz Bonfá that has been in my set lists for a while. Bonfá wrote it for the soundtrack of the 1966 film “The Gentle Rain,” and it was quickly picked up by jazz and pop artists as an instrumental piece or…
Tunes on Tuesday: Pot Luck
Why this tune? This week’s tune is an obscure bebop head written by Johnny Mandel for Stan Getz in the 1950s, that I came across while searching for some Mandel songs to suggest to singers I work with. It’s nothing like “The Shadow of Your Smile” and other more famous works, but still a fun…
Tunes on Tuesday: Conversation (duet)
Why this tune? I first shared “Conversation” on Tunes on Tuesday in June, performing the second version of a song that I started to write back in February. I shared the post with the team at the “Switched On Pop” podcast and was delighted to get a supportive comment from them: “Small talk is so hard. This…
Tunes on Tuesday: These Foolish Things
Why this tune? I’ve been thinking about creating a workshop on lyric writing for jazz musicians, and was looking for a song to use as an example of of creative lyrics to serve as a model and inspiration. “These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You)” is what songwriter Mark Winkler calls a “laundry list” song,…
Tunes on Tuesday: These Are The Words
Why this tune? Tunes On Tuesday returns to my Torah Tunes project with a song for the first portion of Deuteronomy, D’varim (דְּבָרִ֗ים) in Hebrew. The first verse of this fifth book starts “אֵ֣לֶּה הַדְּבָרִ֗ים” “eleh ha-d’varim,” usually translated as “These are the words.” The “words” here refer to the laws and practices conveyed by…
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Oren Levine, jazz pianist and songwriter 