Peter Cherches - Mercerized!: Songs Of Johnny Mercer (2016)

Peter Cherches, voice; Lee Feldman, piano.

A jazz-oriented tribute to lyricist Johnny Mercer, featuring songs written from the 1930s to 1960s, including “Moon River,” “Skylark” and “Satin Doll.” Cherches has written additional lyrics and vocalese for a number of the songs.

Peter Cherches Best known as a fiction writer, Cherches has had parallel careers as performance artist and singer. His first music-performance group, Sonorexia, was a collaboration with experimental mutli-instrumentalist Elliott Sharp. He worked with Lee Feldman on songs and performance pieces from 1984-90, and they re-established their collaboration over the past decade. In 2014 he presented a new jazz repertoire featuring his lyrics along with Lee Feldman and baritone sax player Claire Daly. Publishers Weekly has called Cherches “one of the innovators of the short short story.”

Lee Feldman “Lee Feldman uses a Tin Pan Alley bounce to make twisted or troubled situations sound like parlor songs.” – New York Times. Feldman is a New York based songwriter, pianist, singer and composer. He has released four critically acclaimed albums, most recently Album No. 4: Trying to Put the Things Together that Never Been Together Before. His new trio, The Night Owls, specializes in jazz versions of TV themes of the sixties.