Mary Verdi: Precious Love. CD $15.
Reviewed by J. Peter Bergman
"What the world needs now is love" sings the sweet-voiced soprano of the Berkshires. Her latest CD is a collection of songs that refer love to its proper sources, channels and outlets. Like a river that flows southward to the sea, like the Housatonic whose roots are in the Berkshires, this generous home of beautiful sound brings a generous output of musical adoration to the songs she has recorded on this album.
She opens with the Burt Bacharach hit and closes with a prayer she has penned entitled "Peace and Love," a song dedicated to the world at large. In between, in songs mostly written by the singer herself, she addresses a whole host of love's own personal directions.
There is a song for her parents, written for the occasion of their 47th anniversary; there is a song about her grandfather, written for his 90th birthday - one of my personal favorites in this sentimental collection. It tells the generational tale of admiration for the art of performance and its outcome, the career of Mary Verdi herself. A song of intense pride in her forebears, including her father, it sings with strength and smartness, with clever twists in the lyrics and a musical bump that is just right, country - but not country, accessible to all musical tastes.
Verdi likes to place herself and her loved ones in the center of her creativity. Her "sweetheart, Jim" get the soulful "Kiss Me Again." Her kids (I think) get another song "The Water is Wide."
James Taylor's "Sweet Baby James" is given a delicious and sensual rendering on this recording and rightfully so. It sounds as though it was written just for Mary Verdi to sing.
If you like to spend a half an hour or so with the soft, sentimental, slightly sloping sounds of a siren songstress, then this is the disc you want to have on hand. You'll feel better about yourself and the world around you once you've given this a listen.
Mary will be singing Christmas songs with Bobby Sweet through this weekend (Dec. 4-6) on stage at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield, MA. You can buy this CD in the lobby and you should.
12/03/09
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