Chicago Deserves Better than the Burnell Duo

Anne and Mark Burnell (from the Web page for their new album)

It has been a very long time (decades) since I last visited Chicago; so I can probably be forgiven for knowing nothing about jazz vocalist Anne Burnell and her husband, pianist-vocalist Mark Burnell. The press release accompanying their latest album, This Could Be the Start of Something Big, introduces them has having “long been Chicago jazz treasures.” If that is the case, then I fear that, in my neglect of the Chicago jazz scene, I have not been missing very much.

The thirteen tracks on this recording include four Burnell originals, involving both of them. There are three tracks drawing upon songs from past musicals, one by Irving Berlin (“Isn’t This a Lovely Day” from Top Hat) and two by Frederick Loewe for My Fair Lady (“I Could Have Danced All Night”) and Camelot (“The Lusty Month of May”). For those more inclined to “straight ahead jazz,” one of the tracks serves up Clifford Brown’s “Joy Spring” with the lyrics added by Jon Hendricks. Other composers contributing to the tracks are (in order of appearance) Steve Allen, Neil Diamond, Stevie Wonder, and Dave Frishberg.

Sadly, the prevailing rhetoric across this wide diversity of compositions amounts to little more than blandness. On the positive side, both Burnells have (for the most part) a basic sense of pitch. What is missing, however, is a corresponding sense of shape in the delivery of each of these tunes. It has been a very long while since I have eaten in a restaurant that felt a need to add piped-in music; but, if places like that still exist, most of the tracks on this album would be good candidates for the piping! However, when it comes to bringing any portion of this album to the foreground, I am afraid that I was consistently disappointed.