Stephane Grappelli’s Plays Jerome Kern wasn’t a rethinking of the legendary American Broadway composer’s work, so much as a deeply romantic, light jazz/classical aside. Recorded in 1987, 10 years before the Grappelli passed, Plays Jerome Kern is couched in a luminous, almost pillowy orchestral score by Ettore Stratta.
The initial gripe might have been that the Gypsy jazz violinist – co-founder with guitarist Django Reinhardt of the Quintette du Hot Club de France, one of the first strings-only jazz bands – didn’t goose the material along more often, as he does so effortlessly on a standout update of “All The Things You Are.” Still, across 11 songbook-defining Kern compositions (among them, “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” “The Way You Look Tonight,” “A Fine Romance,” “Ol’ Man River,” “I Won’t Dance” and “All The Things You Are”) it’s hard not to succumb to the simple joys of these themes – and to Grappelli himself.
He comes off like a modest and accommodating gentleman scholar, deeply talented but perhaps a touch too reverent … and yet so lastingly, brilliantly ingratiating that you end up falling in love with Stephane Grappelli’s Plays Jerome Kern anyway.
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