Well, this isn’t your father’s Benny Goodman.
Oran Etkin takes the King of Swing and brings him out of the Shtetl on this outside looking into the Benny Goodman songbook. He teams with Sullivan Fortner/p, Steve Nelson/vib and Matt Wilson/dr and along with the traditional straight licorice stick, adds bass clarinet and tenor sax into the mix. You get some quirky reads as Etkins bass clarinet delves into “Dinah” and a vaudevillian “King Porter Stomp.” His tone is crystal clear on the chamber-sounding “Prelude” and gets a bit Monkish on “Brink.” Vocalist Charnee wade teams up to create a shadowy “Why Don’t You Do Right” and a klezmer sounding “After Your Gone” and Etkin hits the low register on a deep and gospel inflected “When Every Voice Shall Sing.” Etkin’s tenor sounds rich on “Where Or When,” making you wish for more of this, but the gutsy call to put Goodman through a prism took some chutzpah in and of itself.
Motema Music