Composer: Xavier Cugat, Edward William Elgar, George Hamilton Green, Frederick Loewe, Barry Manilow, Wingy Manone, Glenn Miller, John Schönberger, Robert Stolz, Kurt Weill
Performer: Barbara Hannigan, Lucienne Renaudin Vary, Berlage Saxophone Quartet
Orchestra: Ludwig Orchestra
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Alpha
Catalogue: ALPHA790
Release: 2022
Size: 875 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
01. Miller: Moonlight Serenade
02. Luiz: Quien sera
03. Weill: Youkali
04. Manilow: Copacabana
05. Green: Fluffy Ruffles
06. Stolz: Je veux t’aimer
07. Schönberger: Whispering
08. Cugat: My Shawl
09. Loewe: I Could Have Danced All Night (My Fair Lady)
10. Manone: In The Mood
11. Kaoma: Lambada
12. Elgar: Salut d’amour, Op. 12
This album celebrates dance music, from waltz to tango, from slow foxtrot to quickstep, from samba to jive. Seventy years of music rooted in the 1920s, assembled by the enthusiastic musicians of the Ludwig Orchestra, who have taken to playing them at festivals, alongside their usual programmes devoted to Stravinsky or Schoenberg, to get the audience dancing – a phenomenal success story that now becomes an album, “Dance With Me”!
For this project, the Ludwig musicians naturally turned to a partner dear to their hearts, Barbara Hannigan, with whom they recorded the famous recording “Crazy Girl Crazy”, in collaboration with composer-arranger Bill Elliott. The trio has reformed here: “I was thrilled to go back to this aspect of my musical roots, to reawaken special memories of singing and playing keyboards with a dance band in Nova Scotia”, says Barbara Hannigan. “Couples were smiling and dancing to tunes like Moonlight Serenade and In the Mood with a few polkas thrown in towards the end of the evening”. The Canadian soprano performs four songs, including I could have danced all night, Moonlight Serenade and Kurt Weill’s famous and moving Youkali.
More musicians round out the guest-list for the party – the trumpeter Lucienne Renaudin-Vary and the Berlage Saxophone Quartet. “Dance with me” : an invitation to feel happy and light-hearted.