Gina Zollman
Anywhere with You
March 9, 2023
Reviewed by Elliot Zwiebach
Gina Zollman has harvested songs she has sung her whole life, and she shares the emotions she attaches to those songs in her debut CD called Anywhere with You, which she describes as “a passion project.”
Zollman has a crisp, clean vocal quality that eschews histrionics and gets to the heart of each song in a pure, unfettered style, with stellar accompaniment from a variety of musicians in a variety of combinations. Three of the album’s 12 tracks feature stupendous cello backing from Merek Szpakiewicz, who adds a mellow, sensuous tonality to Zollman’s plaintive take on “Someone to Watch Over Me” (George and Ira Gershwin); to her sense of wonderment on “My Romance” (Richard Rodgers/Lorenz Hart), which also features Steven Applegate, the CD’s producer, on piano; and her delicately romantic vocal on the title track, “Anywhere with You” (Christopher Denny).
She hits her peak on two songs in the middle of the CD, both accompanied by Steve Rawlins on piano: a nicely shaded performance of Hoagy Carmichael’s “I Get Along Without You Very Well (Except Sometimes),” which has impressive guitar backing from Terry Wollman, and a sweet, sincere take on Tom Springfield’s “I’ll Never Find Another You,” with Dave Tull joining on drums.
The album also features a powerful, uplifting big-band sound on “You Don’t Know Me” (Eddy Arnold/Cindy Walker), the only track featuring horns, that has Wayne Bergeron on trumpet, Ira Nepus on trombone, and Tom Peterson on tenor sax, all backing Zollman’s soft, steady vocal.
The CD offers only brief instrumental solos over its 40 minutes of mostly basic cabaret-style singing, although Zollman adopts a slightly more jazz-focused interpretation on a bouncy version of “Mountain Greenery” (Rodgers & Hart), in which she handles the clever wordplay and inner rhymes of the lyrics quite effectively. She’s ably abetted by Rawlins on piano, Jennifer Leitham on bass, and Tull on drums. The same trio backs Zollman’s somewhat shaky vocal on “Small Day Tomorrow” (Bob Dorough/Fran Landesman).
The disc opens with a song for which Zollman wrote lyrics, “An Hour or So in the Dark” (music by Wayland Pickard), a brisk, upbeat number about the likelihood of successful seduction “(if) you and I could spend an hour or so in the dark.” Zollman was particularly effective handling the melodically complex “Don’t Miss You at All” (Duke Ellington/Norah Jones). She also offered a tender vocal on “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?” (Burton Lane/Yip Harburg) and a touching reading of “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” (Manning Sherwin/Eric Maschwitz), both of which feature impressive solo piano backing by Applegate.
