Joe Elefante
Listen Here: #SongbookSeries
(self-released)
Emotions conveyed in songbook standards are, by definition, timeless. Masters such as Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer tapped into universal sentiments and crafted melodies and lyrics that continue to speak to the human condition, in some cases, nearly a century after they were written. Pianist and vocalist Joe Elefante turned to those familiar gems after losing his wife of 16 years, Caryn, to cancer in March of last year.
Initially, Elefante shared his deeply personal standard renditions on social media, with the goal of performing one piece each day. Those video performances racked up between 300 and 1,900 views each, and seemed to connect with listeners, some of whom inquired whether he planned to record a standards album. Thus encouraged, the pianist recorded a dozen tunes at Wharton Arts studio in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, utilizing the same title for the subsequent album as his social media platform, #SongbookSeries.
Sentiments are close to the surface, as Elefante delves into words and music that tested his resolve. “While preparing the material,” he writes in the album’s liner notes, “there were times I couldn’t get through a song.” Of course, many of the selections are joyful, as in a sparkling read of the Cole Porter classic “You Do Something to Me,” the Lane and Lerner show tune “On a Clear Day,” or Harold Arlen’s “Old Devil Moon” and “World on a String,” which flip to happy chapters of his love story with Caryn. His pianistic prowess comes to the fore on jaunty versions of “Day In, Day Out” and “I Wish I Were in Love Again,” his fingers flying with lightning dexterity. Yet, one can understand the difficulty Elefante must have encountered in performing tender laments such as “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning” and “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.” Fittingly, he concludes the album with the Leonard Bernstein/Betty Comden/Adolph Green heartbreaker “Some Other Time.” As he writes in his liners, “This record is a love letter to Caryn. Like I told her the last time we saw each other, ‘We’ll catch up some other time.’”
Elefante, who majored in jazz saxophone and piano at New Jersey University, enjoyed a successful career, founding his self-named big band in 2001 — they were the house band at Cecil’s Jazz Club for three years — serving as a Jazz Ambassador for the Kennedy Center, touring Europe and the Middle East for the State Department, and acting as musical director and conductor for theatrical productions such as Jersey Boys. When he married and settled down to raise his family, he worked as a teacher and part-time musician. Following Caryn’s passing, Elefante has rededicated himself to jazz. This past year, he also released Joe Elefante’s Wheel of Dharma, an album of all original music with a quintet. Along with trumpeter Freddie Hendrix, saxophonist Erena Terakubo, bassist Sameer Shankar and drummer David Heilman, Elefante plays a driving brand of post bop that he says keeps “a reverent eye on the past, present and future of the music.”