April Aloisio CD Review:

Close Your Eyes

That face. That smile. Those eyes. That voice. April Aloisio has the whole package. A native of Chicago, she moved to Cincinnati with her family while in high school. After attending Ohio State University, she sang around Cincinnati for a while and then decided to try her hand in her hometown. She recorded three CDs on the Southport label, which included such notables as Von Freeman, L.D. Young and Red Holt. Eventually, the big city became stifling and she moved back to the Queen City. Close Your Eyes is her first recording in the local area. April learned to speak Portuguese in order to sing Brazilian songs. Eight of the 12 songs on the CD are Brazilian, five of them by Antonio Carlos Jobim. The entire album has a Latin feel to it. The opener, Speak Low,” by Kurt Weill and Ogden Nash, is up-tempo with Wayne Yeager playing electric piano, Michael Sharfe on bass and Randy Winters on drums. Gary Winters has a nice flugelhorn solo as well. Back in the 1960s, when Astrid Gilberto had a minor hit (with Stan Getz) on “The Girl From Ipanema,” she sang it in the third person. The girl strolled down the beach and all the boys sighed. Then, Ella Fitzgerald got ahold of the tune and personalized it as “The Boy From Ipanema.” Ever since, it has been done strictly by females and exactly the same way. April sings it in a way that would make most men want to be that boy. Kenny Poole plays beautiful guitar and Joe Gaudio does his best to imitate Getz. Yeager, Sharfe and Winters are back for Dizzy Gillespie’s “A Night In Tunisia.” April does a wordless vocal on this one. It’s not scat; it’s using the voice as an instrument on the melody and the improvisation. On Jobim’s “Insensites,” she’s accompanied only by Poole. The best parts of the CD are when she performs with Poole only. That’s not to take away from the others; it’s just that her voice and his guitar go so well together. She sings the Portuguese lyrics first, then Norman Gimbel’s English lyrics. “Brazil,” which was a big hit in the 1940s, again features April and Kenny. There is also a flute solo by Sandy Suskind that may have been added later. In fact, all three of the horns play such a minor role that it’s tempting to think they were all overdubs. Their contributions are important, but they probably weren’t in the studio with her. Another Jobim piece, “Dindi,” has George Simon on guitar and Nick Radina on percussion, along with Sharfe and Gary Winters. She sings this one in English, including the rarely-heard verse. Two non-Jobim Brazilian pieces follow, Edu Lobo’s “Casa Forte” and “E Preciso Perdoar.” The latter is another voice/guitar tune, sung in Portuguese with Poole. The former is a somewhat up-tempo piece with Yeager on organ, Sharfe on electric bass and Stan Ginn on drums and percussion. It’s another of her wordless vocals, beautifully done. The title tune, “Close Your Eyes,” has the same instrumentation as “Dindi,” but Suskind’s flute is heard instead of Winters’ flugel. Again, there is the samba beat on a tune that wasn’t written as such, but it works very well. “Lover Man” is a voice/bass duet in which Sharfe complements April beautifully and also takes a solo. The tempo is different from the way this piece is usually done. Two more Jobim tunes close out the recording. On “No More Blues,” she sings Jon Hendricks’ English lyrics and is accompanied by Yeager on organ, Sharfe on electric and Ginn on drums and percussion. It sounds like two singers, maybe an overdub or an echo chamber because there is no harmony. On “Once I Loved,” it’s just her beautiful voice and Poole’s beautiful guitar with Sharfe supplying percussion touches. She sings this one in both languages. In sum, it’s a very good album, produced by Sharfe and recorded in his studio. The sound quality is excellent and the various musicians all contribute to the overall tone. But it’s the voice that carries the day.

—Don Henke