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Larry Klein
Larry Klein is a record producer, musician, and songwriter who is 4-times Grammy-winner and 10-times Grammy-nominated. He has been nominated for the Producer Of The Year (non-classical) 3 times. His latest release is “Here It Is: A Tribute To Leonard Cohen”, Klein’s tribute to his dear friend, the great singer, songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen. After Cohen’s passing, Klein found himself selecting many songs from various periods of Leonard’s work to revisit and re-interpret. He finally decided to propose the idea of doing an entire album of Cohen’s work through a genre-defying- lens, working with a stellar band of prescient and forward-looking musicians including Blue Note artists guitarist Bill Frisell and alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, drummer Nate Smith, bassist Scott Colley, pianist Kevin Hays, organist Larry Goldings, and pedal steel guitarist Greg Leisz to Don Was, the president of Blue Note Records. With Was’ approval and the help of these great musicians who think outside the limitations of genre, these great musicians, Klein would endeavor to create a language with which to re-contextualize Cohen’s great poems, using the music to create a stark and cinematic back-drop for the darkly romantic ethos that Cohen created with his writing.
Klein worked with an eclectic group of great voices on the album, including Norah Jones, Gregory Porter, Iggy Pop, Peter Gabriel, Sarah McLachlan, Nathaniel Rateliff, Mavis Staples, David Gray, Luciana Souza and James Taylor.
Simultaneously, Klein has been working on a third album with Norwegian singer and songwriter Thomas Dybdahl; this one a transparent set of meditations on adolescence written with lyricist Edie Kuhnle which combines a spare rhythmic context that Dybdahl and Klein built in a house in the California desert with the poetic and painterly string orchestra writing of the Grammy-winning arranger/composer Vince Mendoza.
Previous to this album in 2013 Klein and Dybdahl first collaborated on the Tchad Blake-mixed “What’s Left Is Forever” which was nominated for a Best Engineered Album Grammy (non-classical). This was followed in 2018 by “All These Things” (V2 Records-Benelux). “All These Things is a dark portrait of Los Angeles that could easily be a soundtrack to accompany such stories of the dark side of L.A. as one might find in “The Day Of The Locust” by Nathanael West.
More recently in 2021 Klein produced the self-titled album by the Argentinian duo Cande Y Paulo (Decca/Universal UK). As a result of this album’s reception the duo was nominated for a Latin Grammy for Best New Artist at the 2022 Latin Grammys.
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Denise Donatelli: Whistling in the Dark... The Music of Burt Bacharach
by Edward Blanco
Multi Grammy-nominated jazz vocalist Denise Donatelli joins forces with Grammy Award-Winning record producer Larry Klein to offer her first concept album devoted to single composer on the soft-textured Whistling in The Dark... the music of Burt Bacharach. The music from one of the greatest song writers in American musical history, was something both Donatelli and bassist/producer Klein had in common. Klein had stated that Bacharach's music has been a part of [his] musical DNA...," while the vocalist affirmed that she ...
read moreDenise Donatelli: Whistling in the Dark... The Music of Burt Bacharach
by Nicholas F. Mondello
The Burt Bacharach canon has always been fertile ground for artists of all kinds to explore. Stan Getz devoted an entire album to his fare. The big Bacharach hits are branded deep in the cultural psyche. Thus, the challenge that Grammy-nominated vocalist Denise Donatelli and producer Larry Klein have here is how to use a different ladle to invite you to imbibe from their recipe for Bacharach's musical champagne. The session offers four Bacharach/Hal David hits--three hits ...
read moreMelody Gardot: Sunset in the Blue - The Deluxe Version
by William H. Snyder
Henri Matisse, the master of the use of color, said, Art should be something like a good armchair in which to rest from physical fatigue." Melody Gardot's Sunset in the Blue: The Deluxe Version shows its mastery, in both the color of its cover design and the execution of its musicianship. Back in the day, Matisse got in trouble with some art critics for his simile. Some listeners might have a similar reaction to Melody's music, but not all. Gardot's ...
read moreMelody Gardot: Sunset in the Blue
by Scott Gudell
Melody Gardot emerged from her own smoky shadows of the mid-2000s as if she were some femme fatale emanating from a film noir movie. The plot twist was that she was the good girl, but it was her body that had been damaged in an auto accident. An extensive recovery followed. Her long, lean cane only reinforced her long, lean looks. The shades added just a touch of mystery. If there was anything positive, it was that she confronted the ...
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