Middle age suits Curtis Stigers better than his long-haired youth. Immaculate in tie, suit and breast-pocket handkerchief, he is smack bang in fashion, making the kind of Blue Note post-bop to which 1960s ad executives sipped martinis. He comes across like an amalgam of Mad Men characters Roger Sterling and Jimmy Barrett… [read more...]

4 out of 5 Stars
* John L Walters (guardian.co.uk, Sunday 1 August 2010)

Middle age suits Curtis Stigers better than his long-haired youth. Immaculate in tie, suit and breast-pocket handkerchief, he is smack bang in fashion, making the kind of Blue Note post-bop to which 1960s ad executives sipped martinis. He comes across like an amalgam of Mad Men characters Roger Sterling and Jimmy Barrett.

His band hits its stride immediately with Arthur Crudup’s That’s All Right Mama. John “Scrapper” Sneider’s cool, poised trumpet solo (quoting Gil Evans) is the perfect foil to Stigers’s dry vocal. But Stigers is not a rock singer attempting maturity through jazz. He’s a jazzer who lucked into pop stardom. Which is why he can get under the skin of standards such as The Meaning of the Blues, In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning and All the Things You Are, which he dedicates to his wife.

He follows this classy interpretation with Jealous Guy, a moving reinvention sung over swirling trio accompaniment by Matthew Fries (piano), Cliff Schmitt (bass) and drummer Keith Hall doing convincingly Elvin Joneslike “circles of sound” – John Lennon meets John Coltrane. Other postmodern touches include the clever San Diego Serenade (by Tom Waits), a jazzy version of Stigers’s hit You’re All That Matters to Me and the Beatles’ I Feel Fine – a version so “jazz casual” we should be watching it in black and white.

This is vocal jazz as smart and knowing as the best American TV, as Stigers integrates 50 years of jazz modernism in a way that avoids histrionics and supper-club populism. He has a likable authenticity that makes Michael Bublé look like Mad Men’s Pete Campbell. After the encore, Stigers thanks us with a chiselled grin: “You’re the best Monday night audience we’ve ever had!”

* guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

Watch the video of our performance at the awards show!

But before that starts, let me update you on the end of the summer season:
On August 22nd, I returned from Dublin, Ireland, where I took part in a lovely concert at the National Concert Hall with actor/singer Mark McGann, British jazz singer Claire Martin, Conductor-extraordinaire John Wilson and The RTE Concert Orchestra. The show was a reprise of the John Lennon Songbook concert we did last summer in Liverpool with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. It’s really a lovely show-amazing songs of course, very emotional and powerful text. I hope we have a chance to do it again.

When I returned I began three quiet weeks at home with my family. We attended the Western Idaho Fair, which is just as you’d imagine it: Rollercoasters, tasty greasy food, cold draft beer, carnival rides and games, farm animals (my daughter milked a cow), and cotton candy, too. Good fun with a little nausea thrown in for good measure. I’ve been going to this fair since I was a kid (with a 16 year hiatus while I lived in New York City) and it’s still the same. Great people watching. Then we spent a few days sitting on a dock and swimming at Payette Lake in McCall Idaho, where we were visiting our friends who have a lakefront cabin. Very relaxing. Got a good tan and even waterskied a little.

Soon after that we visited LaJolla, California to celebrate my mother-in-law’s 80th birthday. Happy birthday, Virginia! Hung out at the beach and played some tennis. More tanning opportunities. Very relaxing. Then we were back to Boise for the beginning of the school year. Back to getting up 7am for all of us. Ouch.
I’m writing this on a plane as I fly home from Los Angeles, where I flew to attend the Emmy Awards. As previously mentioned, “This Life,” a song that I co-wrote and sang for the opening credits of a the FX Network’s hit TV show “Sons Of Anarchy” was nominated for an Emmy, and I figured I ought to show up, just for the absurd showbiz spectacle of it, you know? I was invited to ride to the event with my new friend Seth McFarlane, the creator/producer/actor of the show “The Family Guy” in his stretch limo. Seth’s a good man and funny as hell so it was a good time. When we arrived at the show, I stood back on the red carpet while Seth posed for the paparazzi and did interviews with all the tabloid entertainment shows. It was actually very nice to be an observant outsider in that world, some years after having been in the middle of that crazy scene. It always felt strange and foreign to me to be in that circus and it was educational and amusing to see it from another, rather anonymous, angle. During the awards at The Nokia Theater, I sat with my co-writers, Bob Thiele, Jr. and Dave Kushner and watched Carol Burnett, Katy Segal, Ted Danson and even my pal Seth give out the awards. When it came to our moment, as I always predicted it would happen, the legendary and brilliant composer and conductor John Williams kicked our butts and sent us packing. I figure it’s a win-win. I’m now and forever an Emmy Nominated songwriter and I can always say, “I remember when I lost that Emmy Award to John Williams…” Pretty good feather in my cap. Sadly, Mr. Williams was not in attendance, so I didn’t get to meet him or to challenge him to arm-wrestle me. I could could have whipped his ass in that category, I’m convinced.

Now we’re beginning our descent into the Boise airport. See you on the ground, and out on the road…

Ping Pong in Jena

I’m on a tour bus hurtling down the German Autobahn, headed from Wiesbaden to Fredrichshafen to play another show with my band. We’re on a short tour of outdoor festivals here and then we fly to Heathrow to do one show at the Snapes Maltings concert hall in Aldeburgh, a small village on the east coast of England. The Aldeburgh festival is primarily a classical music festival, but they’re slumming it with a Curtis Stigers concert this weekend. It’s a lovely place, a lovely hall. We played a classical festival last night in Wiesbaden, too: The Rheingau Musik Festival. It was a good show. The audience was more polite and careful than we’re used to, but we warmed them up. By the end of the show they were really into it. The night before we were in Jena, a town of 200,000 that was in the East before the wall came down. Great show, nearly 2000 people in the audience. We played a little ping pong backstage. The band and I were invited to an aftershow party with the Bergermeister (mayor) and some of the local business bigwigs. Carl Zeiss, the famous optics pioneer was from Jena and that’s a big business there. Talked politics with the mayor and the head of Jenoptics and drank too much wine. Good fun. We also had a return show in a little Circus-style tent venue in Kassel Germany called Kulturzelt. Once again they treated us to copious amounts of Pils (beer) and German sausages as we sat outside in the garden after the show. It beats working for a living…

Last week I was in London for the BBC Proms at Royal Albert Hall. I sang several classic numbers (Stepping Out With My Baby, Heather On The Hill, Our Love Is Here To Stay, Well Did You Evah? Etc…) from MGM musicals with The John Wilson Orchestra. It was amazing. Televised live and on radio, with several other singers including Baritone Sir Thomas Allen, and Seth MacFarlane, the creator and star of The Family Guy. It was an all-star orchestra, hand-picked by John Wilson, who has painstakingly re-constructed all the long-lost orchestral scores by transcribing them note for note from recordings. Even the rehearsals were inspiring. The violinists in the back row were section leaders in their own orchestras. Virtuostic playing. We had a lot of laughs (not only is Seth a very funny guy, but Sir Tom matched us joke for joke). You can see some of the RAH performances on You Tube. My family joined me for the whole lovely week in London. What a great way to make a living this is…

I’m home next week and then to Dublin for an August 21st performance of The John Lennon Songbook with John Wilson and the RTE Concert Orchestra, along with British jazz singer Clare Martin and actor/singer Mark McGann. We did the same show with the Liverpool Philharmonic last summer, and I loved it. Happy summer…

Sausages & Pils in Kassel

Available in iTunes

Big news!!!  Curtis Stigers has been nominated for an Emmy Award by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences!  Last year Curtis co-wrote and sang the theme song to the critically acclaimed new FX TV series The Sons Of Anarchy, and the song has been nominated for “Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music.”  In the same category, the legendary film composer and arranger John Williams is also nominated.  “This is such a thrill!  I’m up against the guy who wrote the Star Wars Theme!  Holy spaceballs, R2D2!  I haven’t been nominated for anything since I was in the running for ‘Most Likely To Own A Small Potato Farm’ back in high school!” Stigers says.  Curtis is picking out his bow tie and matching cumberbund for the big night right now…

CURTIS STIGERS – LOST IN DREAMS

Lost in Dreams, Stigers’ new CD on Concord Records was released on September 29, 2009. Alongside his own new material and standards like “My Funny Valentine,” “Bye Bye Blackbird” and “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning” are jazz renditions of Annie Lennox’s “Cold,” Ron Sexsmith’s “Reason for Our Love” and John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy.”

Order Your Copy Today

Copenhagen Skyline

Sitting in my hotel room in wonderful wonderful Copenhagen recuperating after three great nights at the Copenhagen Jazz House with my band. Over the three nights we played/previewed all the songs from my upcoming new release, which will be titled (you heard it here first!) “Lost In Dreams,” and it felt great to go out on a limb and play a bunch of new material. The audiences responded very enthusiastically to it all, which is a relief and very exciting. We’re here in Copenhagen for the jazz festival, which I can highly recommend if you ever get the chance to attend. The whole city becomes a big jazz concert for ten days. There are stages everywhere and nearly all the restaurants, bars and coffee houses feature live jazz at some point during the day or night. It’s amazing. Copenhagen is a jazz town, a music town. I’ve seen some friends while I’ve been here.  The great Danish bassist (and dear old friend of mine) Christian Mihn Doky and his lovely and charming wife Tanja caught a show and hung around for a drink or two, as did my friend from Idaho, Luke Studebaker, who’s visiting Copenhagen from Yale University, where he’s studying architecture. The band and I had a big thrill on the last night of the run when our friend and hero, the legendary jazz drummer Ed Thigpen walked into the green room before the show. We’ve known Ed for a few years now (he once even made us lunch at his apartment; I washed his dishes!) and he often comes out to hear what we’re up to. It’s a little daunting to have his presence in the audience, but ultimately very inspiring and flattering. We’re lucky to have become such good friends with one of the greatest drummers in the history of jazz. He’s just a lovely human being. We’ve got a couple days off here in Copenhagen and then we fly to London for four nights at Ronnie Scott’s in London July 15-18. Summertime and the livin’ is easy…

Backstage in Copenhagen with jazz legend Ed Thigpen

June 11, 2009
A Rockin’ Jazzman (or Is He a Jazzy Rocker?) Ignites a Quiet Cabaret

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

A lean, pop-jazz hipster whose buzz-saw voice, much like that of Tom Waits, slices away glib sentimentality, Curtis Stigers is not the usual sort of act one finds at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel, although he has played there before. (The last time was five years ago.) Depending on your definition he is either a rock ’n’ roll jazz man who plays a honking saxophone that echoes his raw, craggy singing or a jazz-influenced rocker.

READ MORE…

June 11, 2009

MUSIC REVIEW | CURTIS STIGERS

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

A lean, pop-jazz hipster whose buzz-saw voice, much like that of Tom Waits, slices away glib sentimentality, Curtis Stigers is not the usual sort of act one finds at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel, although he has played there before. (The last time was five years ago.) Depending on your definition he is either a rock ’n’ roll jazz man who plays a honking saxophone that echoes his raw, craggy singing or a jazz-influenced rocker.

Either way his renditions of standards by Mr. Waits, Bob Dylan and Randy Newman, to name three songwriters whose work he sang at Tuesday’s opening-night show of a two-week engagement, were tough, rhythmically sneaky reinventions to which his voice imparted an intensely personal stamp.

He got to the slippery bottom of Mr. Newman’s “Real Emotional Girl,” whose narrator, in a tone of wonderment tinged with contempt and guilt, describes the behavior of a girlfriend who cries in her sleep and who

turns on easy

it’s like a hurricane

you would not believe it

you have to hold on tight.

The storyteller knows full well that such intimate details should be kept private, but he can’t help himself.

The angular version Mr. Stigers offered of Elvis Presley’s Sun Records classic “That’s All Right” illustrated the stylistic proximity of rockabilly and cool jazz; the difference is largely a matter of instrumentation and phrasing. Mr. Stigers’s saxophone and John Sneider’s trumpet in a band that included Rick Germanson’s modified bebop piano and Cliff Schmitt on bass took the song into an imaginary jazz cellar of the 1950s.

There is another element in Mr. Stigers’s music about which he clearly harbors some ambivalence and perhaps even embarrassment. “I have a previous life as a pop sensation,” he joked. “But it was the 1840s, and I had a hit record.” That song, “I Wonder Why,” a collaboration with Glen Ballard, which he dutifully tossed off, was a Top 10 single in 1991.

The more recent original songs Mr. Stigers performed — “You’ve Got the Fever” (written with Tom Jensen) and two collaborations with Larry Goldings, “The Dreams of Yesterday” and “I Need You,” discard commercial formulas to explore abject passion, regret and marital ambivalence in stripped-down directness. The self-portrait they evoke is of a restless, thin-skinned dreamer perched on the edge of an emotional volcano.

Curtis Stigers performs through June 20 at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel, 59 West 44th Street, Manhattan, (212) 419-9331, algonquinhotel.com.

Village Voice -David Finkle
“The singer-saxophonist returns to the room after too long an absence. Not since Chet Baker has a male warbler been quite so cool at impeccably interpreting the Great American Songbook. Expect items from his Real Emotional Concord CD. Rick Germanson on piano, Cliff Schmitt on bass.”
June 9-20, 8:30 & 11 p.m., 2009

Here’s what I can tell you…
I’ll be back on the road performing soon. My first step back on the road is a small but important one: I’ll be doing an intimate acoustic show in Boise, Idaho, my hometown. The concert will take place on Saturday May 9th at the Fulton Street Theater in Boise, and all proceeds will benefit Boise Contemporary Theater, a great organization that’s feeling the pinch of these economic times, and therefore needs a hand. I’m happy and proud to lend that hand, along with local comedy/theater heroes The Fool Squad, and my friends Bill Coffey, Ned Evett and Steve Fulton (and more?). It’s going to be quite a party.

Click here to find out more and to buy tickets online.

After that I’ll fly across the Atlantic to London to sit in with my friend and hero, the Basher, the Impossible Bird, the Jesus of Cool himself, Mr. Nick Lowe, at his May 18 concert at Royal Albert Hall! I’m as thrilled as a little boy on Christmas morning about this one.

The next day I’ll put my guitar and sax in a hired car and drive south to Burgess Hill, a small village north of Brighton, England, to do a one-night-only solo acoustic concert. I’ll be playing many of my old songs that I don’t get a chance to play with my jazz group, and some songs that will be new to you. I’ve recently discovered that my friend Ned Evett will coincidentally be in England at the time and will join me, which of course makes it a decidely NON-SOLO show, but who’s counting?. Ned is an internationally acclaimed fretless guitarist who happens to also be from Boise, and he will wow you, mesmerise you, and the height of his hair will astound you. It’s the 8th Wonder of the World, Ned’s hair.

I’ve got a show in New Jersey in early June, a two week stand at the Algonquin in New York City (June 9-20); I’ll be at the Toronto Jazz Festival on July 4th and then back to the UK and Europe in July and August. The autumn will bring full and proper tours of the UK and Germany, to promote and celebrate a new album release. Busy year ahead!

I’ll see you soon! Check out some of the new features on my website as well all my tourdates!

thanks, as always, for your continuing support!
Curtis