'We Get Requests' (2007)
LB0075

In the last year Janet Seidel has won Australian Jazz Vocal CD of 2006, topped the Jazz Charts in Japan for 3 consecutive months and The UK Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD calls her “Australia’s first lady of jazz singing”. At the same time she has enjoyed a growing reputation in her parallel career in cabaret with several shows and CDs successfully jumping genres.

This new CD release is the result of a season at the excellent Adelaide Cabaret Festival and captures Janet in top form playing instant requests from the audience.

The Cabaret show was conceived as a kind of ‘art imitating life’ idea based on Janet’s experiences as a solo cocktail pianist playing piano bars around the world and also including the combined experiences of bassist David Seidel and guitarist Chuck Morgan playing countless lounge gigs over the years.

Over the years many people including a scattering of celebrities have sat around Janet’s piano and made requests, but this show features real-life requests from the cabaret audience. They wrote their requests, often with special dedications on slips of paper and the trio spent the brief interval figuring out which songs they would then perform on the spot.

The CD was recorded over several nights of a sell-out season at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2003 and includes new versions of some songs from Janet’s CDs but the majority of tracks are songs she has never recorded before.

1 A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square
2 My Attorney Bernie
3 But Not For Me
4 Your Feet’s Too Big
5 Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend
6 Cry Me A River
7 They Can’t Take That Away From Me
8 The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
9 Brenda’s request (dialogue)
10 Johnny Guitar
11 Why Don’t You Do Right (Get Me Some Money Too)
12 A Foggy Day
13 The Look of Love:
14 I’m an Old Cowhand
15 Them There Eyes
16 All The Way
17 You Do Something to Me
18 My Baby Just Cares for Me

JANET SEIDEL; VOCALS / PIANO
CHUCK MORGAN: GUITAR
DAVID SEIDEL: DOUBLE BASS

“In the second half the trio eased through a pile of audience requests.... It was fun to watch them improvising arrangements as they went... Her singing was typically dreamy, the words floating, cloudlike, and there was an effortlessness about her projection, helped by the excellent sound and having such soft, sympathetic and transparent accompaniment from both her colleagues and her own piano.“
John Shand, Sydney Morning Herald May 19th 2003 (Glen Street Theatre)