I Get a Kick out of You

Album release concert June 22 at Bal Blomet

The I Get A Kick Out Of You concert is made up of three essential ingredients. First, the great standards of the legendary Cole Porter with an all-star Big Band, Made in France, featuring stars of the Paris jazz scene and brand-new arrangements. The great classics from his repertoire that everyone knows: “I Get A Kick Out Of You”, “Love For Sale”, “I Concentrate On You”, “Just One Of Those Things”, … These songs have been rearranged and re-orchestrated, with a contemporary perspective, by two amazing musician-arrangers: Philippe Maniez, for the most part, who also plays the drums and is the musical director for the project, and Bastien Ballaz who’s a fantastic trombone player.

The second ingredient is original compositions, melodies and texts that respond to Cole Porter’s music, arranged and orchestrated for the Big Band. These songs take their inspiration from everything that makes up my musical vocabulary, from the Beatles to today’s pop with Adele, The Arctic Monkeys, or Michael Jackson. But played in our style, acoustic, swinging and jazz, by what I consider to be some of the best musicians on the Paris jazz scene today.

For the third ingredient, we didn’t deny ourselves the pleasure of digging into the archives and grabbing a few orchestrations of great classics by Quincy Jones, Nelson Riddle, Billy May, Bill Holman or Bill Byers. It’s a pleasure to rediscover such familiar sounds as “Get Me To The Church”, “You Make Me Feel So Young”, “Come Fly With Me” and “All Or Nothing At All”.

But why sing the music of American crooners again? Perhaps, as Frank Sinatra once said: “because of the girls! And I happen to know, very, very well, a wonderful singer called Isabelle Georges, whom I invited to sing a rather humorous duet on the album, entitled “You’re The Top”. She also performs a wonderful solo on Cole Porter’s classic “I Love Paris”.

Finally, contact with the audience is essential. We’re with each other, we see each other, we meet for an evening, we think it’s a concert, but we come to a party, it’s deeply alive, it produces an effect similar to the pop of a bottle of champagne, it makes a lot of noise, bubbles in all directions, it overflows and makes you want to dance.

This album and show have their roots in New York, where I was taking some classes at The New School university one hot summer. What better place for an aspiring singer-songwriter to soak up the essence of things than New York?

Showman’s, Smoke, Birdland, and the Off- and On-Broadway theaters where new forms of music and entertainment were trying to make their way. I saw, listened to, and admired Randy Newman, Liza Minnelli, Tony Bennett, and Michael Feinstein.

One hot Sunday afternoon, despite all the craziness, urgency, and effervescence, I felt as if the city had come to a standstill. It was about to rain, a storm was rumbling over the towers and their lonely walls, and nothing was moving, even in Central Park.

From a small café on the corner of 57th and Broadway rose a Cole Porter melody. A few lines presented themselves to me: Sunday in New York, the rain before it falls, no one’s going to the park, a Yiddish band plays Yerushalayim Shel Zahav, a drunken homeless journalist, a horde of Chinese bumblebees, the piano plays a Porter tune, at the Waldorf Astoria tea salon… I jotted them down in a notebook, not knowing what to do with them at the time.

The following Monday, a friend took me to The Village Vanguard, where the big band played “Anything Goes”, by Cole Porter again. A few years later, when I moved to another home, I stumbled upon these lines and others: “Sunday in New York”, “Hotel Amour” and “Take Me Home”. I’d worked Cole Porter down to the last detail and listened to the big bands of Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Benny Goodman over and over again. It all seemed to come full circle.

I was missing one element, a partner, until I came across a drummer in a Paris club. As we chatted in the bar after the concert, we discovered that we shared the same inspirations. The idea was there: the big band, Cole Porter, and the lyrics for new songs.

It has taken me two years to bring together what I consider to be some of the finest young talent who perceive the phrasing necessary for this kind of music. The title “I Get a Kick Out of You”, by Cole Porter, of course, is also a personal dedication to New York, Paris, and the talented musicians involved.

EPK Frederik Steenbrink I Get A Kick Out Of You

Tickets

Album

Buy Cd

Listen online

Press release (French)

I Get a Kick out of You

Album release concert June 22 at Bal Blomet

Credits

Subscribe to the newsletter