Dear Mr. Sinatra: John Pizzarelli in Surround!

Dear Mr. Sinatra

Dear Mr. Sinatra is an outstanding album,filled with polished performances and arrangements. While the disc’s standard CD layer is no slouch, the hi-res surround mix by Robert Friedrich astonishes with its clarity, subtlety, and dynamics, making Dear Mr. Sinatra one of my top picks of 2006. 

HDTV Etc.recently caught up with John,who was chillin’ between gigs at his country home. 

HDTV ETC.: You’ve said that you waited many years to properly present Sinatra. What was the challenge?
JOHN PIZZARELLI: It had to do with finding the right way—for me—to do Sinatra. I didn’t want to do Nelson Riddle arrangements, and I didn’t want to just pick Sinatra’s biggest hits. I wanted to do a different take on it. When I was20 years old, I was in a band with a singer who sang Sinatra songs, and I didn’t want to do them!

HDTV ETC.: But didn’t you eventually open for Sinatra?
JP: Yeah! So 26 years later, I had more of a feel for him, knew the history, and I looked at the opportunity and said, “Now that I’ve established myself, what do I want to say about Frank Sinatra, and how do I want to say it?” 

HDTV ETC.: Once you identified your collaborators—John Clayton, Jeff Hamilton, and the Clayton Hamilton Jazz Orchestra—how did you pick the songs and work out the arrangements?
JP: I felt that using an established big band and a guy that writes specifically for it would be the way to go. That sets everything in a whole different direction and why the record has such a unique vibe. I was doing a tour with the band,and I said, “Well, if you’re gonna write some charts for me and we’re going out on the road, let’s come up with a theme and also do a record.” I asked Jeff if he had any favorite Sinatra songs, and he picked “You Make Me Feel So Young.” The rest I picked out, and told John to go for it. We had four days, and we rehearsed for one and recorded for three. Rob Friedrich did a helluva job recording and mixing it. You can hear the room. It’s fantastic—the way that it breathes. Half of that you lose on CD. We used the new Sonoma DSD 32-track digital recorder, which gave us the flexibility of mixing it properly with all those instruments.

HDTV ETC.: Did you record your vocals live with the band?
JP: I pretty much did everything live, except “Under My Skin” because I had something bad to eat and I had to lie down when they were doing the take. That’s never happened to me before! 

HDTV ETC.: A standout track is “Witchcraft.” You turn that up to eleven and it knocks your hair back.
JP: Oh yeah! It’s thrilling to have a record like this out there!