Lena Horne Seasons Of A Life CD

Personnel: Lena Horne (vocals); Rodney Jones (guitar, acoustic guitar, electric guitar); Donald Harrison (saxophone); Mike Renzi (piano, keyboards, background vocals); Herbie Hancock, Frank Owens (piano); Bobby Forrester, Oliver Von Essen (organ); Mark Sherman (vibraphone); Benjamin Brown (bass instrument); Akira Tana, Lewis Nash (drums).
Over a career that stretched from the 1930s into the 2000s, Lena Horne established herself as one of the 20th century's leading singers and interpreters of show tunes, vocal jazz, and pop. SEASONS OF A LIFE, Blue Note's 2006 compilation, brings together 10 previously unreleased performances recorded during the '90s, providing a lovely late-career reminder of the talents of the vocal legend.
Remarkably, given her age at the time, Horne's performances are as rich, nuanced, and precisely controlled as ever. Standards ("Stormy Weather"), show tunes ("Singin' in the Rain"), and a host of Strayhorn-Ellington selections provide the perfect canvas to represent Horne's skills, with "Willow Weep for Me," a duet with pianist Herbie Hancock, emerging as one of several highlights.
Lena Horne had effectively retired in 2006 when Blue Note released Seasons of a Life, an album compiled for her by her musical director, Rodney Jones, and including unreleased performances recorded between 1994 and 2000. It's an effective capstone to her career, and shows that even at the age of 80, the former Cotton Club featured attraction had lost little of the verve and sophistication she exhibited throughout her career. The material comes from six different sessions, some live but most in a studio environment, including outtakes -- most of which sound like outtakes -- from her Blue Note albums of the '90s. Three of the performances come from the Blue Note project Classic Ellington, which allowed Simon Rattle and the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra to pay tribute to Duke Ellington in a classical context. (For this release, Rodney Jones appears to have merely excised the symphony to make these small-group performances.) Most interesting, however, are two tracks recorded with Herbie Hancock, the first a trio recording of Billy Strayhorn's "Chelsea Bridge" and the second a Horne-Hancock duet on "Willow Weep for Me." ~ John Bush