# Cyrille Aimée pushes herself into new terrain with ‘Move On: A Sondheim Adventure’: Videos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2018/11/28/cyrille-aimee-pushes-herself-into-new-terrain-with-move-on-a-sondheim-adventure-videos/
- Published: 2018-11-28T21:38:47+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Up until about five years ago, Cyrille Aimée had no particular relationship with
the music of Stephen Sondheim.**

Growing up in Samois-sur-Seine, France, she didn’t hear many of his peerless songs
for the musical theater; she was more naturally immersed in global pop, French _chansons,_
and the effervescent gypsy jazz of Django Reinhardt, which she eventually claimed
as a signature.

Aimée, who won the 2012 Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Competition, has a nimble
and agreeable style. Singing in a light-gauge timbre but with brisk command of intonation,
she’s a performer with the effervescent appeal of a Bastille Day sparkler, as you
can hear on her current Mack Avenue release, _Cyrille Aimée Live_.

What pointed her in Sondheim’s direction was a 2013 New York City Center production,
_A Bed and a Chair: A New York Love Story_, which featured the Jazz at Lincoln Center
Orchestra behind a starry array of vocalists. A collaboration between Wynton Marsalis
and Sondheim himself, the show largely drew from the Broadway talent pool: Bernadette
Peters, Jeremy Jordan, Norm Lewis.

But Aimée, coming more from jazz, delivered a breakout performance in the show. 
WBGO’s Michael Bourne, who was there, has hailed her delivery of “Live Alone and
Like It,” which she later [recorded in an intimate arrangement](https://youtu.be/cxoCXlJhBDE)
for her album _Let’s Get Lost. _Another song she sang that night — “You Could Drive
a Person Crazy,” from the musical _Company_ — opens this official highlight reel
from the show.

The experience of singing Sondheim’s songs, which are celebrated both for their 
emotional resonance and their sophisticated construction, obviously stuck with Aimée.
Her next album — _Move On: A Sondheim Adventure_, which Mack Avenue will release
on Feb. 22 — is a full immersion, featuring 14 gems from across the composer’s songbook.
It’s the first such focused study in Aimée’s career, and her first album since moving
on, so to speak, from her longtime band.

The first single from the album is a version of “Marry Me a Little,” featuring Brazilian
guitarist Diego Figueiredo against the subtle shimmer of a string quartet. The song
is a romantic entreaty spiked with pragmatic qualifications, and rather than play
up the pathos, Aimée negotiates that balance in a naturalistic register.

Elsewhere on the album, Aimée delves into salsa (“Being Alive”), second-line rhythm(“
Take Me to the World”) and even ambient electronics (“I Remember”) as well as her
familiar baseline of frantic gypsy swing (“So Many People”). Her partners include
keyboardist and co-producer Assaf Gleizner (a former classmate at SUNY Purchase)
and a trio of versatile French musicians: pianist Thomas Enhco, bassist Jérémy Bruyère,
and drummer Yoann Serra.

In addition to setting an ambitious new bar for Aimée, _Move On _represents one 
of only a handful of sustained Sondheim treatments by a jazz artist. Jackie Cain
and Roy Kral released an album plainly titled _Sondheim_ in 1982; _Color and Light:
Jazz Sketches on Sondheim _was a 1995 release with contributions from Herbie Hancock,
Nancy Wilson, Jim Hall and others. A few years ago, a Canadian saxohonist named 
Bobby Hsu released a well-received album titled _City of Strangers_, under the banner
of A Sondheim Jazz Project. Beyond that, for the most part, jazz has been highly
selective with the Sondheim canon, focusing on a small crop of songs — like “Send
In the Clowns,” which will always be [indelibly associated with Vaughan](https://youtu.be/IRVbB359fiY).

Perhaps for that reason, Aimée doesn’t touch “Clowns” on the new album. Nor does
she revisit “Live Alone and Like It.” But she does offer a soft-rippling take on“
Not While I’m Around,” the _Sweeney Todd _ballad that has seen a [notable iterpretation](https://youtu.be/bCCcuW0iPpw)
by Kurt Elling. Throughout the album she brings an attunement to lyrical clarity
that nothing, not even her natural air of insouciance, can displace.

“Passionate as hell / But always in control” is a couplet found in “Marry Me a Little.”
It’s a fitting appraisal — as is the part that comes just afterward: “I’m ready!/
I’m ready now!” Aimée doesn’t put much spin on it, but she owns that assertion. 
She titled this album _Move On, _but it could just as easily have been called _Level
Up_.

![Cyrille Aimée pays homage to a celebrated songwriter with 'Move On: A Sondheim
Adventure'](https://i0.wp.com/mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/wbgo/files/styles/
medium/public/201811/mac1144_cyrille_aimee_by_noe_cugny_300dpi_rgb_pr15.jpeg?w=640)

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