Girl From Ipanema

torch-singer-al-bourassa Okay, this might be an overdone classic but, in the right place and time, this arrangement will work for you.  You’re doing a club where the audience is actually paying attention, so you decide to seize the moment.  You’ve got the sultry voice needed for this song and you’re about to show it off.

The lights go down and a warm blue spot shines down on only you.  Nice.  Your guitar player strums the introductory chords and the crowd recognizes the song immediately.  They wonder if you’ll sound like Astrud and if the arrangement is the one they’ve heard a thousand times before.  It’s not.  This is your song right now and nobody else’s…. and the band is so subtle behind you as to be almost invisible.  You have these people in the palm of your hand and they love the song again.  You’re so good…

What’s nice about this sequence is you can give your piano player a chance to show off his chops.  You’ll sing the song through once, then let your pianist solo for like, 32 bars, then you’re back in to do it all again and out.  I left the keyboard solo in but your guy may want to mute it and play his own (probably better than mine) rendition.  The vocal track is on track 4 (flute) but you’ll want to take that out and show ’em what you can do with this old classic.  It’s on the jazz/swing list…

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