The Lady Swings

Performing Arts & Entertainment in Canada, Wntr, 1999 by Ben Viccari

Whether it was Carol Welsman's or her promoter's idea to subtitle her new CD and her two series of Swing Ladies, Swing! concerts A Tribute to Singers of the Swing Era, immediately suggesting some kind of vocal impersonations, they needn't have bothered. In her renditions of Honeysuckle Rose, Fever and God Bless the Child she's definitely not Lena nor Peggy nor Billie. Neither does she need to be. Neither is she re-inventing Holly Cole or Diana Krall. In her own right, Welsman has shown Canadian audiences that good, old fashioned tunes of the swing era are alive and well and that as a modern-day proponent she's had the commonsense to interpret the classics in classical fashion.

By now, all jazz lovers must know that Welsman is the granddaughter of Frank Welsman, founder and first conductor of the Toronto Symphony and that for years she's had a yen to sing with a symphony orchestra. And that twice in March she sang concerts with her grandfather's old group, preceded by a series with the Winnipeg Symphony. And that audiences loved her.

Even Oscar Peterson - who deplores much of the contemporary "swing craze" as a fad and is now himself currently dedicated to interpreting swing in classical fashion - hails Carol Welsman as a singer-pianist having "an extraordinary talent, worthy of world-wide recognition".

Welsman's third CD is a departure from her former two releases. In Swing Ladies, Swing! she's the lady of the concerts, singing, not with the Toronto symphony but with an orchestra of symphonic proportions, backed by her own quartet and soaring arrangements by Jimmy Dale.

The combination works well, with the quartet clearly making its statement against the lush backgrounds of the symphony players and neither declaring war on the other.

From a searing rendition of Fever to a romping reading of If I Were a Bell, Welsman has picked her selections well. Swing Ladies, Swing! offers 12 numbers that begin with Fats' Honeysuckle Rose and end with George Gershwin's Do It Again. In between, Welsman gives us standards like Cheek to Cheek and Over the Rainbow and the highly welcome and infrequently heard What are You Doing the Rest of Your Life? and Black Coffee.

In April, organizers of the du Maurier Downtown Jazz Festival in Toronto announced that Welsman would sing in a tribute to Hoagy Carmichael on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth - a year he shares with the Duke. She was chosen (along with Aura Borealis and Tommy Ambrose) to perform "Hoagy Night in Canada" at the du Maurier Stage at King and John Streets.

Re-mastering techniques have brought thousands of original swing era interpretations to the market and some cynics suggest contemporary revivals will be short lived. But with Peterson and Welsman going down the same road, one

[INCOMPLETE TEXT FROM ORIGINAL PUBLICATION]