Goldstar Member Tips

• jack on Other
  Get there early as 7:30 is too latr for an 8pm show.Most seats were already taken

2 Goldstar Member Reviews

Goldstar Member

Listening to Steve Tyrell just makes you feel good. It was a very enjoyable set. I was surprised that he didn't do songs from his recent Bacharach album; the write-up accompanying the listing seemed to suggest that he would be doing so. Nevertheless, we had a great time.

Written on Aug 13 2009

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jack

it is a very enjoyable show but was very surprised as it was posted as steve does burt.Many other songs besides burt's to my surprise.He is quite the showman

Written on Aug 13 2009

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More Information About Steve Tyrell at Blue Note Jazz Club

Website

http://www.bluenote.net/newyork/schedule/moreinfo.cgi?id=6977

Description

Every recording artist has one album that they are destined to make - an album so singularly in-sync with their sensibility and history that its’ making smacks of pure destiny. For Steve Tyrell - the distinguished Grammy winner and Emmy nominated purveyor of pop standards, as well as a behind the scenes impresario- that album is Back to Bacharach, a deeply personal collection of songs from the piano of Burt Bacharach and the pen of Hal David.

"This album is different from any I'll ever do," states Tyrell, who in the last decade has been at the forefront of a renaissance in recordings from the Great American Songbook via his previous six projects and the Grammy winning albums he produced with Rod Stewart. "The music of my friends Burt and Hal has been a lifelong collaboration. Their songs are my songs. It's a very unique situation."

Indeed. It was as a bright and ambitious 19 year-old that Steve journeyed from Houston, Texas to New York City to work at pop and soul music giant Scepter Records. By that time, he'd already been a recording artist at 15, scoring local R&B hits on the Philips and London labels.

When Steve arrived at Scepter Records and its adjacent Baby Monica Publishing Company, he immediately found himself surrounded by swiftly developing super teams such as Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Nickolas Ashford & Valerie Simpson and Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil. But it was with a pair of outside contractors - songwriting producers Burt Bacharach & Hal David - that Steve would forge his most personal alliance.

Through his work with Bacharach & David, Tyrell got to work in motion pictures and at a very young age became one of the first music supervisors responsible for coordinating hit songs with the release of the films they appeared in. Those successes included the gold standard of foreplay songs, "The Look of Love" (recorded for the James Bond spy spoof Casino Royale by Dusty Springfield), and the theme for Alfie (sung by Cher in the film and by Dionne Warwick at the Academy Awards) as well as the theme from the legendary Jacqueline Susan film Valley Of The Dolls (which Tyrell helped to make Dionne’s first number one Pop hit record.) The film song that Steve played a major role in was "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" - the one that earned Bacharach & David the Oscar® for 1969's Best Original Song in a Motion Picture. When looking for an artist to sing the song, Steve called in his friend from Texas, B.J. Thomas who recorded it for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Steve was content working his behind-the-scenes magic until he was "rediscovered" as an artist singing "The Way You Look Tonight" as the wedding singer in Disney's 1991 comedy Father of the Bride. After he sang two more numbers in the 1995 sequel, fans demanded more of Tyrell, resulting in his first album A New Standard, released on Atlantic Records to a 90-week run on the Billboard® jazz chart and peaking in the Top 5. A switch to Columbia Records resulted in three more Top 5 charters: Standard Time (2001), This Time of Year (2002) and This Guy’s In Love (2003).

In 2003, the stage was finally set for Steve to do the Bacharach album. He called Burt in to help and got two songs completed before tragedy struck. His beloved wife and co-producer of the first three albums, Stephanie Tyrell, had been diagnosed with cancer. A gifted lyricist is her own right, Stephanie composed many wonderful songs including a 1992 number 1 pop hit entitled “How Do You Talk To An Angel?” But the song that she was most proud of was "Remember the Dream," a piece Coretta Scott King personally requested be sung over the grave of her husband, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to commemorate the 25th anniversary of his death.

When Stephanie became ill, Steve put everything on hold. He completed his fourth album, This Guy's in Love, with other standards he'd already recorded and spent the last 18 months of his wife's life by her side. "Burt called me almost every day when she was sick...always concerned," Steve remembers. "And when she died, he played 'A House is Not a Home' - with James Ingram singing - at her memorial.

After Stephanie’s death, Steve did not immediately return to the Bacharach project. First came the equally humbling and fortifying Songs of Sinatra project for Hollywood Records in 2005 which once again achieved Top 5 status on the Billboard jazz charts, followed by a collection of Disney film music titled The Disney Standards in 2006, which achieved Top 10 status on the Billboard jazz charts. Finally ready to get Back to Bacharach, Steve took a year and a half to handcraft his dream project.

The all-star recording is for a worthy cause - all proceeds will go to the National Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance (NCCRA) in remembrance of Steve's wife Stephanie and Jay Monahan, the late husband of television journalist Katie Couric. Close friends, Steve Tyrell and Katie Couric have worked together constantly since his wife’s death raising funds to benefit Colon Cancer research and co-host an annual benefit in Seattle called “Make The Evening Matter.”

"I like to say Back to Bacharach was 40 years in the making," Steve concludes. "There is no other music like this in my life. And I am honored to share it with the world...my way."