David Benoit 
featuring Jane Monheit: 2 in Love 


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David Benoit
featuring Jane Monheit

2 in Love

July 15, 2015

(Concord Jazz)

Reviewed by Victoria Ordin 
for Cabaret Scenes

David-Benoit-Jane-Monheit-2-in-Love-Cabaret-Scenes-Magazine_212There is nothing not to love about David Benoit’s recent collaboration with vocalist and fellow Grammy nominee Jane Monheit, 2 in Love. Past Benoit albums have included a single “token” track with vocals (“The Key to You” off Every Step of the Way comes to mind), but this is the smooth jazz legend’s first full record with vocals. From the first notes of its opening track—the exuberant “Barcelona Nights” (Lorraine Feather)—you can feel Benoit’s excitement about this musical experiment. 

With the exception of the final track—a successful and innovative melding of “Love Theme from Candide” and “Send in the Clowns”—all music is Benoit’s.

The press about the album leaves no doubt that Benoit and Monheit, along with lyricists Feather, Mark Winkler and Spencer Day, are having a ball. And while Benoit, a consummate arranger, composer, and pianist, hasn’t worked for years as an accompanist, he credits Lainie Kazan with having taught him in his 20s what accompaniment really means.

As a fan of Benoit’s since Freedom at Midnight (1987), which I discovered in dance class at 15, I found his instrumental music rich and full in ways I couldn’t then explain, but now understand to be a function of his genius as an arranger. His compositions have an epic sweep even without vocals.
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The songs on this album simply integrate an element already in some sense there.

“This Dance” (Winkler) is an obvious, but, nonetheless, effective metaphor for the album’s larger project: the joyful union of voice and piano.

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After three decades and thirty recordings, Benoit has nothing to prove. 2 in Love reminds us that “we only get one chance.” There is “only this dance.
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” Monheit croons coaxingly along with the gentle piano that builds to the swelling, percussive choruses: “Don’t put off your dreams/Thinking that your dreams will be fine.

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” 

But following dreams—whatever they may be—is risky business, as the slow, contemplative ballad “Dragonfly” (Winkler) makes clear. If the conclusion of “Too in Love” (Feather) is that you can’t love too much, ballads like “Love Will Light the Way” (Day) acknowledge that “clouds” and “sorrow” can attend the pursuit of “the best” in the terms of “This Dance.
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” Monheit’s voice is nowhere more breathtaking and confident than in the chorus of “Fly Away” (Day): “Fly Away/How I’m going to fly away/I believe that love is waiting on the other side.” 

If anything can convince listeners that it’s safe to “go for the best/damn all the rest,” thereby “show[ing] the heavens what [we’re] made of,” surely the resounding success of Benoit’s musical risk should. It’s easier in life to settle, to stay within zones of comfort, but 2 in Love passionately urges us not to.