What better way to open an album titled Spring than with a song by Antonio Carlos Jobim? Vocalist Tierney Sutton and pianist Tamir Hendelman do just that with their read of the Brazilian maestro’s “Double Rainbow” on their dozen-track ode to the season. The pair evokes the mood of a rainy day in the garden, at once celebrating the effects of precipitation as well as generating bittersweet feelings of longing, or “saudade,” the secret ingredient to so much Brazilian music. “The rain is falling on the roses, the fragrance drifts across the garden,” Sutton sings. “Like the scent of some forgotten melody, this melody belongs to you.” Hendelman and Sutton anticipate and respond to one another as only longtime colleagues can, the pianist setting the scene with an emotionally rich intro before the singer comes in with her wordless vocalizing. The pair had been performing shows as a duo before deciding to lay down tracks in the studio, and they maintain the feelings of spontaneity and intimacy they engender on stage. In addition to Jobim’s, they delve into other songbook staples that play upon the metaphor of spring as a time of hopefulness — as well as its melancholy obverse — such as “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most” and “Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year.” But listeners can hear which side of the equation Sutton lands, as she concludes the album with Michel Legrand’s “You Must Believe in Spring,” featuring a little heard verse by her friends, the late Alan and Marilyn Bergman.
