“Move Forward Like the Seasons” Recording in Review
Yuwan Zhang, vocalist
Jeffrey Chappell, pianist
December 31, 2023
A link to the album “Move Forward Like the Seasons” wound up in my box for reviewing this holiday season, the first album for singer Yuwan Zhang, and it made for some lovely listening. In the collection are five standards billed as from the “American Songbook”: Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most, Summertime, Autumn Leaves, Blackberry Winter, and Fly Me to the Moon. Clearly, there is a seasonal theme at play, and we are told by Ms. Zhang in notes not provided to the public that it arose from four jazz ensemble concerts over four semesters at Goucher College, 2017-2019. She called the concerts “The Season Tour” and four years later, the piano-vocal version of these songs became her first album. As Ms. Zhang writes, “This album contains many seasons of mine … The reason for me to choose “Fly Me to the Moon” as the last piece is because I believe no matter how seasons go by, we always see the loved ones in our hearts.” She adds that the title of the album is from the lyrics of a song called Seasons written by her favorite singer-songwriter Greyson Chance, whose mother said, “We don’t grow up with years, but with the rotation of the seasons.”
Most music lovers will be familiar with several of these standards, such as Summertime (1934, by George Gershwin, with lyrics by Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward), Autumn Leaves (1946, by Joseph Kosma, lyrics by Johnny Mercer), and Fly Me to the Moon (1954, music and lyrics by Bart Howard). The two songs that may be slightly less familiar to many are Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most (1955, music by Tommy Wolf, lyrics by Fran Landesman) and Blackberry Winter (1976, music by Alec Wilder, lyrics by Loonis McGlohon).
These last two were highlights for this listener. Though there is a stunning Ella Fitzgerald rendition of Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most – and more recently Norah Jones and others – this listener hasn’t encountered it in concerts more than once or twice, so it was good to see it on this new recording by Ms. Zhang. She delivers the lines with persuasive pathos. As one heard in several other songs there was also a chance for a more up-tempo interlude by the pianist Jeffrey Chappell (who was also Ms. Zhang’s jazz performance teacher during her undergraduate years). A graduate of Curtis and Peabody, Mr. Chappell is currently Professor Emeritus at Goucher College, composer, journalist, recording artist on multiple labels, and a member of the award-winning jazz quartet, Otherworld. He and Ms. Zhang collaborate well, at least as heard here.
Blackberry Winter is another underappreciated gem. In fact, if one searches the title, one will find much information about the seasonal phenomenon of “Blackberry Winter” (the kind of mid-spring cold snap that inspired the song) before one even finds this song. Ms. Zhang’s rendition captures the song’s captivating wistfulness, and Mr. Chappell provides beautiful support.
Of the more familiar songs, Summertime was a surprise. To start with, it was miles from the slow steamy versions that bring to mind sweltering scenes of Catfish Row in Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess (from which the song comes). That was already a jolt, but then the Zhang-Chappell version took a new direction structurally as well, with a rhythmic keyboard bass in the introduction and an up-tempo middle section featuring walking bass and lively keyboard improvisation. This middle section made the return to the sultry opening all the more poignant, but it will be for some an acquired taste. Also, in terms of timbre, Ms. Zhang’s voice (a light mezzo) showed in this song more the breathiness of an ingénue than the world-weary heroine we expect from this historic opera.
Beyond these surprises, there was little attempt to simulate the regional dialect one usually hears in this song (no dropped G’s for example). Granted, there is room for reimagining such songs – even Janis Joplin did a version Gershwin would hardly have recognized (though even Janis Joplin dropped a lot of G’s!), but it may be tough for some diehard fans of this song’s tradition to hear it afresh. Among other surprises (and at the risk of seeming to advocate for cultural appropriation – a charge that has beset this opera and Gershwin in general in recent years), there is a regional spirit at the roots of this music, and the absence of that left this listener feeling that something was amiss at times. That said, undoubtedly new young listeners who are less steeped in the history of this opera may enjoy the ride.
The accompaniment of Summertime was again expertly done by Jeffrey Chappell. Frankly, the instrument he played on sounded more like an electronic keyboard than an acoustic piano, but as we were not informed of the details about the recording (no dates, places, or engineering credits named, not even composers in what I was sent), it’s anyone’s guess. Whatever the case was, he handled his part beautifully.
More of Mr. Chappell’s styling was enjoyed in Autumn Leaves. Here Ms. Zhang was also at her best, savoring the low register with the melancholy feeling that expresses the heart of this song. Just as in Summertime, Autumn Leaves enjoyed a “breakout” moment in a brisker tempo.
The extremely famous standard, Fly Me to the Moon, was a pleasant surprise. It opened with what was either another singer in duet with Ms. Zhang or it was overdubbed by Ms. Zhang herself. Again, we don’t know, but whatever the case may be, it was charming. At just around a minute and a quarter (much shorter than the usuals, including Sinatra et al.), it seemed to be over too soon.
Ms. Zhang has an appealing musicality and much flair. Hailing from Chengdu, China. she came to the United States in 2016 (graduating in 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in music and biology from Goucher College) and has already won some prizes and appeared at Carnegie Hall. She studied vocal music performance with Annie Gill and is currently in the Master of Fine Arts in Screen Scoring program at Columbia College, Chicago, studying with Michael Patterson and Kubilay Uner. With such wide-ranging skills in music, Ms. Zhang will surely make her mark through one or more of them. For now, you can catch her “on the rise” with this recording.
The Zhang-Chappell collection is being released on December 31st on Soundcloud, Bandcamp, and NetEase Cloud Music, with other platforms to be announced.
