Night Like This

Only we in jazz and our allies in cabaret refer to them as quot;standardsquot; anymore-songs at once timeless and emblematic of their own day, most of them written for Broadway or Hollywood during the 1920s, '30s, '40s and early '50s by Kern, Berlin, Porter, the Gershwins, and the like. In no small part, the most enduring of these songs owe their longevity to something lost on many who hummed or whistled along with them on radio when they were new-an underlying harmonic complexity that continues to make them apt vehicles for jazz improvisation, much as they once were for Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Parker. But even though the song may remain the same, so much about us has changed, from our colloquialisms to our sexual mores, that the lyrics to these numbers must occasionally strike younger ears as positively Chaucerian. Nor are lyrics the only age barrier, because something else that's changed post-Dylan (and post-Eminem, certainly) are our expectations regarding a singer's relationship to his or her material, and to us. No matter how much of themselves Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday put into their interpretations (and no matter their audiences' prior knowledge of their well-publicized travails and peccadilloes), American popular singing was once akin to presentational acting, hardly the outlet for autobiographical revelation we take it to be today. Or to paraphrase Mabel Mercer, her role as a performer wasn't to weep, but to move an audience to tears. Still in his early thirties though already a veteran of the Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and Nelson Riddle orchestras, Bryan Anthony is a young singer mature enough to realize that the older songs he favors don't call on a singer to express himself so much as to be himself-to deliver lyrics conversationally, as if giving voice to thoughts that just occurred to him, but in a way that encourages the listener to identify with the sentiments expressed in the lyric, not just with the singer. Straight out of the Manhattan School of Music and NYU when he suited up as a featured vocalist with those ghost bands, Anthony-who, though born in Northern California, grew up near Houston and now divides his time between there and New York-routinely found himself performing before audiences as much as two generations his senior. quot;That never alienated me,quot; he says, quot;but it did have me asking myself why there weren't more younger people as excited about this music as I was.quot; How does one go about making older songs still seem relevant? Aging opportunists coming to those songs from rock or r&b think all there is to it is accessorizing them with string orchestras and other period finery, enclosing both the songs and themselves between ironic quotation marks. Anthony knows better. His approach is more organic-and more honest. The honesty lies in his belief that, just as with classical art songs and operatic arias from previous centuries, remaining true to the emotions expressed in a vintage pop tune, even while putting your own spin on it, can be the bridge between their time and ours. His dark and somewhat moody ballad interpretation of quot;They Can't Take That Away from Mequot; is a good case in point. quot;I'm especially proud of that one,quot; he told me. quot;I've never heard it done that way before-not that it hasn't, but not that I'm familiar with. The few months before these sessions were a tumultuous time in my life, and I was doing my best to channel the different emotions I was feeling into all of these songs. But that one w