NEW READINGS OF COLE PORTER

By Sergio Pujol

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We could start these lines celebrating that the songs of Cole Porter have not disappeared. His refined harmonic turns and progressions continue to have interpreters, voices that call them to life after so many years and so many versions. But there’s also something else: Ester Andujar (1976) is neither practicing history nor spiritualism. Her greatest contribution is not reminding us of the good tunes this great composer wrote – for this matter we only need to choose some familiar taste from our record collection - but showing us new perspectives on an excellent songbook in a precise and seductive way.

She sings Porter now and today, with modern arrangements that dip in a combination of bebop, soul-jazz and other more contemporary styles. Shortly after turning the record (there’s no more vinyl, like in the times of Anita O’Day, but there still are round things that spin), we discover that each tune is an arrangement. Or even better: that each tune summons a musician capable of contributing his/her own vision to the composition. If the original score went through the hands of Jorge Pardo (Get Out Of Town), Ester is more emotional, somewhat deeper. When the arranger is Ximo Tebar, the singer sounds sharper, playing with the swing (Night And Day). In the version of “Just One Of Those Things”, Rob Bargad’s Fender Rhodes is an irresistible invitation to funk, which Ester accepts with sexy grace yet without over-doing it (by the way: take notice that in “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” she’s not trying to be Marilyn). And when she sings “I Get A Kick Out Of You”, this Valencian gets wrapped in the impeccable playing of the pianist Helen Sung, who not incidentally is responsible for this arrangement.
This rotation of arrangements and approaches never reaches the extreme of being disjunctive. At the end, there are Porter, Ester and Jazz to give this celebration an organic sense, thus avoiding the post-modern pastiche. Celebrating Cole Porter happens to be based on a strong relationship between writing and improvisation. Like a musical thread, Ester’s voice connects structure with spontaneity. This connection sounds honest and real. It sounds essentially jazzy.
Ester sings with laid-back expression and her phrasing flows easily. It seems clear that she appropriately relies on the legato and the soft attack. Her singing style is light, in the sense that she avoids dramatic density unless she deems it absolutely necessary. She can be virtuosic, like in “From This Moment” which has the best scat of the recording, or intimate; but never does she overact nor try to show off her talents beyond the scope of the tune.
In her musical ways live many delightful hours spent in listening to albums. Recordings that educated yet didn’t inhibit her, that didn’t suffocate her with the weight of the canon. We could even say that Ester likes to go against the tide. For example her version of “Easy to Love” purposely looks to take distance from Ella Fitzgerald’s version, which is certainly unsurpassable. With this gesture of recognition yet distancing Ester sagaciously shows us that we can continue to sing Cole Porter without being retro. And that the best lesson the masters of jazz teach us is not a clue to interpretation, but a clue to life. Of life full of sounds to be sung and heard with all the freedom and curiosity we can master.
 

Sergio A. Pujol. Writer and musical critic. He is author, among other books, of “Jazz al sur. La música negra en la Argentina” (Emecé-Planeta).