Ryan Greer not only covered the waterfront (the title tune) in his Metropolitan Room show, he and his trio made good inroads into covering some of the Great American Songbook’s best-known songs with a soft jazz overlay, both interesting and attractive.  His opener was as eligible a number as one could find, Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen’s “This Time the Dream’s on Me,” from the 1941 film Blues in the Night.  Up next, the show’s title song, written in 1933 by Johnny Green with lyrics by Edward Heyman, revealed vocalist Greer’s easy delivery of a slow, sensuous rendition graced with an equally easy-on-the-ears arrangement.

Greer is a crossover artist, comfortable and effective with his songs, whether presenting them in the classic mode or, typically as the selection wore on, shifting into jazz mode and, with his willing musicians, shifting into more uptempo and creative renditions. Pianist Alex DeZenzo and his crew, John Feliciano on bass and drummer Miles Moran, were good counterparts to Greer, their deferential backing giving his vocals respectful prominence.  The trio’s jazz abilities, and they had plenty, showed off nicely with energetic and imaginative solos during the songs’ instrumental breaks and in the numbers that midway surrendered their classic origins and took on melodic directions of their own.

For the uninitiated, although there were few of that description among his mostly youthful audience, Ryan Greer and the trio illuminated how a talented crew morphs classics such as “Body and Soul” and  “It Could Happen to You” into absorbing jazz numbers. And perhaps, considering the group’s appealing rendition of “Misty,” a comparable understanding of how Erroll Garner’s jazz composition made its way into the company of the Great American Songbook.

Peter Leavy
Cabaret Scenes
December 5, 2011
www.cabaretscenes.org