Fifty

The Manhattan Transfer, WDR Funkhausorchester

Released on 9/23/22 by Craft Recordings
Main artists: The Manhattan Transfer WDR Funkhausorchester
Genre: Jazz

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With 2022's Fifty, Grammy-winning vocal quartet the Manhattan Transfer celebrate their 50th birthday in illustrious fashion, collaborating with Germany's WDR Funkhausorchester. Founded in the 1960s by the late Tim Hauser, the Manhattan Transfer helped repopularize '40s-style vocal harmony jazz, swing, and traditional pop, all while incorporating contemporary pop and dance elements. Here, original members Janis Siegel and Alan Paul, along with longtime member Cheryl Bentyne and Trist Curless (who joined after Hauser's passing in 2014), look back on the group's albums and revisit some of their favorite songs. Helping them achieve this time-traveling journey is producer and Take 6-member David Thomas as well as musical arrangers Jorge Callandrelli and Vince Mendoza and vocal arranger Amanda Taylor. While there's certainly a sense of warm familiarity about many of the songs included here, the group smartly eschews many of their obvious hits, like "Birdland" or "Tuxedo Junction," that became staples of their live shows. Instead, they favor equally memorable songs that represent the many genres and styles they've incorporated into their sound over the decades. There's a widescreen, Technicolor vibe to the album that feels like a classic Hollywood film where the main characters travel the globe to far-off exotic locales. Emblematic of this is the opening "Agua," a cinematic and moody MPB ballad by Djavan and Brock Walsh off 1987's Brasil that evokes the expansive harmonies of '60 groups like Free Design. Similarly, "Paradise Within" is a dreamy tropical number off 2018's The Junction that conjures the romantic big band vibe of the 1940's that remains so redolent of the Manhattan Transfer sound. Also bringing to mind the group's swinging, big band-inspired style is their lush rendition of the Artie Shaw standard "The Man I Love" -- a never-before-recorded arrangement. In classic decade-mashing fashion, they also they also dive into some of their more adventurous choices, including their surprising update of XTC's '80s classic "The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul" from The Junction and the hip-hop-infused "What Goes Around, Comes Around" off 1991's The Offbeat of Avenues. They even revisit their campy reworking of Bernard Herrmann's Twilight Zone theme off 1979's Extensions. These are lush, orchestral productions that add even more textural colors to the quartet's already vibrant vocal harmonies.

© Matt Collar /TiVo

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Fifty

The Manhattan Transfer

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Agua