Miharu Koshi -- Moonray

 

Looks like tonight is the night for covering old standards. Earlier, I contributed Shun Sakai's（酒井俊）lovely soulful cover of the original 1934 "For All We Know". Now I've got "Moonray" (1939), a slow swinging composition by the legendary clarinetist Artie Shaw and his orchestra with Helen Forrest singing.

As has been the case with "For All We Know", "Moonray" has had its variety of covers over the years, and surprisingly or not surprisingly, chanteuse Miharu Koshi（コシミハル）has also provided her own cover. I say "surprisingly" since although I knew her for her very early days as a City Pop singer and then her 80s times as an avant-garde technopop artist, I hadn't known about her abilities in the jazz genre. On the other hand though, I also want to add the "not surprisingly" tag because Koshi is someone who has dipped her fingers into different kinds of music, so why not jazz?

There may not be any clarinets playing in Koshi's cover of "Moonray" but the arrangement for the title track of her October 2015 album is wonderfully nocturnal. I have to cite the lovely contrast in the intro between the smoky wood bass being plucked away and Koshi's whispery and high-pitched scatting before she begins singing. Of course, we can't forget the playful tones of the piano and the dapper brushing of the drums. It feels like being in an intimate jazz supper club in the 1950s or 1960s.