Singer/saxophonist Curtis Stigers releases his seventh album on the Concord Jazz label this spring. Let's Go Out Tonight departs from his recent jazz projects to focus on songwriters ranging from classic Bob Dylan to indie composers Neil Finn of Crowded House and Wilco's Jeff Tweedy. Darker than his previous American Songbook material, the result is raw, brooding and highly personal.

Although there are no Stigers compositions on this project, his song choices show a deep understanding of mood and synergy that is an art akin to songwriting itself. Stigers sets the tone for the album by opening with Dylan's great "Things Have Changed," which won an Oscar as the theme song for the film Wonder Boys. Singing of a "worried man with a worried mind" who "used to care but things have changed," there's a regret and biting self-awareness that becomes the overriding sentiment of the album. These aren't the love songs of bright-eyed naiveté, but rather a rueful look back at choices made and paths not taken.

Stigers arrangements hit the right note for the material. From the low-key vocals to the soulful horns, he creates a dreamy soundscape that moves the listener into a reverie of love, loss and reassessment of their own life choices. Although it sounds like a downer, the outcome is strangely uplifting. As he sings in the Jeff Tweedy-penned Mavis Staples classic, "You Are Not Alone" -- "Open up, this is a raid/I want to get it through to you/you're not alone." Comforting words as we make our way through our own dark nights of the soul.

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April is Jazz Appreciation Month. What I appreciate most about jazz is that no one has the one and only, exclusively correct, definition of jazz. Which is quite liberating: If no one can tell me what jazz is, then no one can tell me what jazz is not.

Some folks consider Dixieland music, for example, to be the most original and pure form of jazz. But if Dixieland is jazz, how can music played by bands like Return to Forever and the Yellowjackets be jazz? It's completely different, almost totally opposite, music. And if that music is jazz? Then the wobbly blue rhythms and chords of Thelonious Monk surely are not... are they? What do we do with a vocalist like Tony Bennett? Is he a jazz singer? He sings a lot of pop...

That's what I appreciate about jazz the most: No matter what you claim jazz "is" -- Dixieland or fusion or bebop or whatever -- we can with just a little effort find something completely different and call that music jazz, too.

From this perspective, jazz becomes much more than just one style of music, it becomes a way of listening to and appreciating ALL styles of music. The way Isaac Hayes rearranges a pop tune like "I Stand Accused" and transforms it into a profoundly personal soul manifesto, or that Pucho & His Latin Soul Brothers rough up Marvin Gaye's "Trouble Man," or that Tom Ball finger picks through a Merle Travis tune -- it's all jazz to me.

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Tony Award-winning powerhouse Idina Menzel has been bringing Broadway to audiences around North America, performing with local symphony orchestras conducted by the legendary Marvin Hamlisch. In Toronto, she recorded a PBS special, Idina Menzel Live: Barefoot at the Park. The accompanying CD and DVD, Live: Barefoot at the Symphony, mark her debut on Concord Jazz.

Menzel shot to fame in the original cast of Rent and won a Tony for her portrayal of Elphaba in Wicked. In the meantime, she married her Rent castmate, actor Taye Diggs, who makes an appearance here, joining her in a lighthearted rendition of “Where Or When.”

With her vivacious personality and big voice, Menzel more than holds her own fronting Canada’s renowned 52-member Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony. Along with beloved Broadway hits, she twists the scenario by singing songs not usually given orchestral treatment, like Jimmy Webb’s evocative “Asleep On The Wind.” Menzel has been a recurring cast member on Glee and she reprises Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face,” which she sang on the show with her TV daughter, Lea Michelle. She introduces the song with a hilarious story about her mixed emotions upon getting the offer to play the mother of an actress who, in real life, is 25-years old. Throughout the show, her humor is warm and self-deprecating, never falsely modest or too showbizzy.

Another inspired arrangement is a mashup of Cole Porter’s “Love For Sale” and Sting’s “Roxanne.” Scandalous when “Love For Sale” premiered in a 1930 musical, it was banned from radio and its story has been downplayed ever since. Matching it with “Roxanne” brings the subject matter to the forefront.

Menzel closes her show with “Defying Gravity”, her showstopper from Wicked, followed by a heartfelt “Tomorrow” from Annie. This is Broadway for a new generation, old and new, rock and pop, and a must-have for Great American Music lovers of all ages.

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You can keep the romance lingering long after Valentine's Day by picking up Tony Bennett’s latest release, Isn’t It Romantic? A compilation of his most heartfelt ballads, recorded on Fantasy and his own label, Improv, it contains classic tracks recorded with Ruby Braff and the highly acclaimed duets with pianist Bill Evans.

Younger fans may not be aware that Bennett was a card-carrying heartthrob in his younger years. In 1952, when he married for the first time, 2000 female fans staged a mock funeral, standing outside the church dressed in black.

Bennett has sublimated the physical power of his youth into something deeper. The man whose most notable quality after his browned butter tone was the direct connection between his heart and his voice, summons even more emotional sensitivity in his later years. A little wry, a lot wiser, the heart he wears on his sleeve may be slightly frayed but still holds enough youthful optimism to allow him, and us, to remain open to the promise of new love.

Speaking of romance, no other instrumentalist matches Bennett’s emotional lyricism like Bill Evans. The two albums they recorded together are one of the most successful collaborations in jazz, with Evans’ passionate slow burn both supporting Bennett’s vocals and lifting them to new heights. His intros, solos and occasional reharmonization of “We’ll Be Together Again,” “Young And Foolish” and “But Beautiful” create an atmospheric dream world, transforming these chestnuts into flights of nearly heartbreaking poignancy.

The four tracks featuring cornetist Ruby Braff and guitarist George Barnes are from Bennett’s 1973 release, The Rogers And Hart Songbook. Although the playing is first rate and their subdued approach perfectly matches the spirit of this compilation, the tracks are palate cleansers between courses of the real magic made by Bennett and Evans.

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