Carol Fredette: Everything in Time

It’s hard to believe that a full decade has passed since veteran New York vocalist Carol Fredette served up Everything I Need, a scrumptious platter of Bob Dorough and Dave Frishberg tunes. For this long overdue return to the studio, she harkens back to her debut recording, wisely re-teaming with producer, arranger and bassist David Finck, whose tasteful musicality so greatly enhanced Fredette’s Love Dance in 1984. Well into the fourth decade of a career that has unfairly flown somewhat under the radar, Fredette sounds as fresh and pure as ever, tempering a girlish vitality vaguely reminiscent of Blossom Dearie with a soupçon of Frishberg-esque mordancy and mischievousness as she shimmies through 15 selections from the Great American and classic Brazilian songbooks.

Fredette’s “Dream Dancing” is appropriately satin-lined, her “Last Night When We Were Young” fittingly wistful and her “A Fine Romance” aptly animated. (She also takes a welcomed double dip into the Mack Gordon songbook for fine renderings of “I Wish I Knew” and “Love Thy Neighbor.”) But Everything in Time becomes most interesting when she and Finck stray from the expected, as on back-to-back gems from Michel Legrand and Alan and Marilyn Bergman, with the usually deliberate “Pieces of Dreams” taken at an enticingly urgent pace and the bright, sunny “I Was Born in Love With You” bathed in long shadows.

Originally Published April 1, 2009