Armed with a smoothly authoritative tenor that suggests Michael Feinstein crossed with Mel Torme, and the eclectically sophisticated taste of Mark Murphy, Jack Donahue is a guy worth keeping an eye on. Three years ago, Donahue proved himself a comer in the jazz-cabaret stakes with the multishaded Lighthouse. It was, though, a mere prelude to the far more exquisite Strange Weather (PS Classics), arranged and produced by the perennially classy Peter Eldridge. It’s not every singer who can handle the carousel ebullience of Kenny Rankin’s “Haven’t We Met” (the centerpiece of my all-time favorite Torme album, That’s All), the retro bounciness of “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby,” the saucy innuendo of Cole Porter’s “Let’s Do It,” the inky grandeur of Kurt Weill’s “Lost in the Stars” and the cheeky familiarity of Jay Leonhart’s cocky “Robert Frost” with parallel aplomb. Donahue can.
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