To end her four-year Ella Fitzgerald period, Dee Dee Bridgewater went to Wroclaw in Poland in March 2000, at the invitation of Roman Kolakowski. It was there that she first came into contact with the powerful, magical and sensual world of Kurt Weill. She made her first attempt to translate this special experience into the idiom of jazz at the Montreal Jazz Festival in July of that year. On the CD
… This Is New you can hear that she succeeded in putting a personal (jazzy) stamp on Weill's music. Not a small achievement, if you consider that this music was made for the theatrical world of musicals and operettas. With this album she also tried to make Weill's often dark and gloomy music more accessible and a bit more light-hearted. But also to break the boundary between the types of music, through which she hopes to eventually end up in the world music class. It can be concluded that Weill's music has allowed Dee Dee to bring out the many facets of her capabilities. To speak with Kurt Weill himself 'There is only good and bad music'. Hopefully this piece makes it clear where This is New should be classified. (RM)more