“Arlen’s song were stamped with a special quality: a rare combination of earthiness and sophistication, passion and innocence, and the rich, bluesy melody that marked them as works of the great Harold Arlen.” –Arne Fogel Christine Rosholt © Andrea Canter One of the rising stars of vocal jazz in the Twin Cities, Christine Rosholt had a busy 2006. Her recording, Detour Ahead, was nominated as “Best Jazz Recording” for 2006 by the Minnesota Music Academy; she had her solo debut at the Dakota Jazz Club, and has graced the bandstands of nearly every music club in the metro area. Now sit seems her momentum is only increasing in 2007. In January, Christine headlined the Twin Cities Jazz Society's Jazz From J to Z concer in Bloomington, “My Shining Hour: A Salute to the Music of Harold Arlen.” (Click here for Arne Fogel’s article!) This week (March 6th), she will reprise this splendid revue at the Dakota Jazz Club in downtown Minneapolis. A native of the Twin Cities, Christine graduated from the Minneapolis Children’s Theater Company & School and earned a BFA at the Art Institute of Chicago where she majored in performance art and photography. Her career in theater has included original performance art pieces and traditional theater as well as vocal performance. As a
jazz vocalist, she has headed trios and quartets at such venues as the Dakota, Nochee, Café Havana, Times, Rossi’s, Red Ginger and more; and has been a featured vocalist with Beasley’s Big Band. Citing influences ranging from Anita O’Day, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Blossom Dearie, and Frank Sinatra to Connie Evingson, Diana Krall, Jane Monheit, John Pizzarelli, Joni Mitchell, and Karrin Allyson, Christine says: "I especially like the jazz standards from the 1930s and 40s because they’re timeless, they swing, and they’re sentimental without being syrupy." Harold Arlen And what about her interest in Harold Arlen? It all began with “a love of the Wizard of Oz,” explains Christine. “It is one of my favorite movies of all times I even have a Cairn Terrier, like Toto—his name is Tally.” And like many who love vocal music, Christine “knew many of his songs before I actually knew he wrote them. Which is true of many people—I find when I say his name to non-musicians, they say ‘Who?’, but when you start listing the songs he wrote, people say ‘he wrote that!!?’ I did not really start to differentiate between composers that much until I started to immerse myself in jazz at the beginning of my career. When I was offered the chance to do the concert by the TCJS, I immediately thought of Arlen.” Christine has been attracted to Arlen’s lyrics at least as much as to his melodies. “I am in love with his songs. He was a very creative and distinct composer. I feel his music is very beautifully wedded with the lyrics.” She cites the 1999 documentary, Somewhere Over the Rainbow: Harold Arlen by Don McGlynn, in which Johnny Mercer notes that "the lyrics are the wings to the music, the music are wings to the lyric. Without it they are clay footed and they lie on the ground." Christine agrees: “As a vocalist, the lyrics to a song are very important to me. …He started out with ambitions to be a vocalist himself, as did Mercer. He never let the standard to write 32-bar songs stifle his creativity. If the lyrics provided to him by Johnny Mercer, Y.E. Harburg or Ted Koehler (three of his most frequent collaborators) were longer than that, he made the song however long it had to be to accommodate the lyrics. This caused consternation in rhythm sections then, and even now with the jazz players I work with, who have been conditioned to play in 8-bar phrases. You can't just sit back and relax when you play an Arlen tune the first couple of times, because they are unpredictable, and therefore very rewarding and delightful to perform once you learn them.”  Connie Olson © Andera Canter Arlen was one of the most prolific songwriters of his generation, which presented a challenge to Christine in selecting a playlist for the tribute. “He wrote over 400 songs, not all of them classics mind you, so it was really hard to decide which ones to do. I wanted to make sure I had some recognizable ones as well as more obscure ones to help broaden his work to the audience…I have done lots of research, and ‘auditioned’ many Arlen tunes, which took quite a while. It has been really fun, but much more intensive than a club gig. Christine will include her favorites, including “Over the Rainbow,” “Down With Love,” “Blues in the Night,” “My Shining Hour,” “It's Only a Paper Moon,” “One For My Baby,” “I've Got the World on a String,” “Come Rain Or Come Shine,” and “The Man That Got Away.” For the January show, Christine enlisted two of the Twin Cities’ finest vocalists to join her in the Arlen tribute—Connie Olson and Bruce Henry. “I picked them because they are both incredibly talented and the two of them work together all of the time. Connie and I have very similar sensibilities and she is really fun….” Connie will be on hand for the Dakota show, and the singers will be supported in stellar fashion by Tanner Taylor (piano), Gordon Johnson (bass), Mac Santiago (drums), and Dave Karr (sax and flute). The show runs 7-11 pm, with the Arlen sets planned for approximately 8-10 pm. This will be a truly “Shining Hour”—or two! The Dakota is located at 1010 Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis. Reservations recommended at 612-332-1010.
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Friday, 09 January 2009
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