Kathie Lee and Hoda talk about Tony on the Today Show!
Check out this new clip of Tony playing piano!
TONY DeSARE
Biography
Singer, pianist and composer Tony Desare earned high praise for his recent debut at the legendary Café Carlyle. “With his dark hair, bright brown eyes and toothpaste smile that rarely fades,” raved The New York Times, “he exhibits the slicked-up charm of an early ’60s pop star with Rat Pack dreams.” United Press International called him “the freshest face on the saloon circuit…[with] a straight-forward delivery that is hard to beat in a profession that already has too many overly mannered divas. You’ll be seeing him around a lot, and very soon.” MSNBC praised him as “an engaging singer, with a warm, clear, mellifluous voice and some real stage charisma.”
Tony DeSare performs with infectious joy, wry playfulness, and robust musicality. His takes on classic standards and sophisticated original compositions have earned him a reputation as one of New York’s hottest young singer/pianists. His sound is romantic, swinging and sensual, but what sets Tony apart is his ability to write original material that sounds fresh and at the same time blends seamlessly with the Great American Songbook. Tony has the capability to glide from a standard by George Gershwin to a contemporary classic by Tom Waits to one of his inventive original songs with ease.
Radio Show, his new album on Telarc set for release in January 2009, embraces a variety of eras in American popular music, all tied together by the voices of radio announcers who set the tone for each individual track and the recording as a whole. The album weaves a few original compositions with material from sources as diverse as Harold Arlen, Bob Dylan, New Order, Hoagy Carmichael, Chuck Berry and more. But more than just a collection of period songs with clever intros, Radio Show is a historical retrospective of the intimate relationship between the music, the listener and the magic medium that brought them together.
Radio Show is the followup to Toney’s 2007 recording, Last First Kiss, which spotlights a refreshingly contemporary combination of originals and standards, from Prince’s “Kiss” and Carole King’s “I Feel the Earth Move” to classics like “You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To” and Sammy Cahn/Jimmy Van Heusen’s under-recorded gem “Come On Strong.”
Want You, Tony’s debut CD, debuted at 16 on the Billboard jazz chart when it was released in May 2005 by Telarc International. The CD includes standards like “Two For The Road,” “Just In Time,” and “I Wish You Love,” as well as originals “Marry Me,” “How I Will Say I Love You,” and the title track. He performed selections from the CD on national broadcasts of the CBS Early Show, NBC Weekend Today and Fox News Channel. His tour to promote the album brought him to New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Palm Beach, Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis and more.
Tony composed and performed the title theme to My Date With Drew, an independent documentary feature film about a guy who has 30 days and $1100 to get a date with Drew Barrymore. It has been featured on “The Tonight Show,” “The Today Show,” Playboy Magazine, Entertainment Weekly and Premiere. The film – awarded top honors at the New York Gen Arts Festival, the HBO Comedy Arts Festival and the Vail Film Festival – was released in theatres nationwide in 2005. The movie’s theme song, “If I Had Drew,” is featured on the CD.
Tony was personally selected by Sam Arlen, son of Harold Arlen, the composer of classic songs like “Over The Rainbow,” “Get Happy,” and “Stormy Weather,” to perform with the Duke Ellington Orchestra at Birdland for the 2005 Harold Arlen Centennial. His new big band show was presented by “Saturday Night Live” alum Joe Piscopo in Atlantic City.
Born in Glens Falls, New York, Tony was raised in a musical family and began singing and playing professionally at 17. By the time Tony started college, he had opened for visiting headliners and built a large regional following playing to packed houses. The Tony DeSare trio was one of the most popular bands in central New York State while Tony attended Ithaca College. Tony and his band continually sold out shows in clubs and showcases throughout upstate New York. He took first place in the “IC Showcase,” a college sponsored national battle of the bands and was a semi-finalist in the MasterCardActs, a national talent search for college performers.
Shortly after moving to New York City in 1999, Tony was cast as the star of the long running Off-Broadway musical smash, Our Sinatra, in which he was praised by Variety for his “dapper charm.” Tony has also been a featured performer at Jilly’s, the legendary Rat Pack era celebrity hangout owned by Frank Sinatra’s best friend. In the fall of 2002, Tony performed at the Apollo Theater where he first met jazz guitar icon Bucky Pizzarelli. Since then, Tony and Bucky have performed numerous times together. Currently, Tony has become a main attraction at New Jersey’s premier jazz club, Shanghai Jazz, where he plays monthly to sold-out crowds. Tony and bassist Mike Lee were also featured in New York TV personality Bill Boggs’s Off Broadway show Talk Show Confidential at the John Houseman Theater.
TONY DESARE TUNES IN
TO THE GOLDEN ERA OF RADIO
ON NEW TELARC RELEASE
Radio Show captures the magic of the 20th century wave
For most of the 20th century, well before the dawn of the digital age, radio was the primary channel for popular music of every kind. More than just a means to transmit sound on a wave to remote locations, radio created an intimate entertainment experience, a fraternal atmosphere wherein the music and everyone associated with it became a friend to the listener.
Singer-pianist Tony DeSare, a child of the ‘80s and a member of what is perhaps the last generation to witness the direct and powerful influence of radio on 20th century popular culture, recaptures that golden age on his new Telarc recording, Radio Show. The album is set for release on January 20, 2009.
Radio Show embraces a variety of eras in American popular music, all tied together by the voices of radio announcers who set the tone for each individual track and the recording as a whole. Most prominent and diverse among the announcers is former Saturday Night Live comic and longtime radio personality Joe Piscopo. “He has an amazing, dynamic voice, and he understands all of these radio eras and styles so well,” says DeSare. “He gave me a 1950s rock and roll DJ, a late-night jazz DJ, a 1970s AM radio DJ and a talk radio host. He’s immensely talented in his ability to change his voice and move in and out of different characters.”
More than just a collection of period songs with clever intros, though, Radio Show offers up a historical retrospective of the intimate relationship between the music, the listener and the magic medium that brought them together.
The idea came from some old Frank Sinatra recordings in DeSare’s collection that captured the iconic singer in his early years, performing for radio broadcasts during World War II. “Radio created an atmosphere in which to frame the songs,” says DeSare. “You’d hear Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Judy Garland or any other prominent singer of the day, all singing each others songs, whatever was the hit of the week. In that same way, I wanted to create my own modern-day radio show on a record, where I could sing any song from any artist or any generation, and do it with my own arrangement. I’ve included songs from the ‘30s all the way through the ‘80s. I wanted to make a statement about pop music as a whole, and more specifically, about 20th century pop music.”
The album opens with a World War II-era orchestral fanfare and voiceover intro, followed by a big band rendition of the Harold Arlen/Ted Koehler classic, “Get Happy,” a track loaded with punchy horn riffs and Hammond B3 organ. “By putting the verse in front of the chorus, I’ve reframed the song a bit,” says DeSare. “It almost comes across like the opening number in a gospel revival.”
The following track, the smooth and easygoing “A Little Bit Closer,” is one of five tunes penned by DeSare – all of which fit seamlessly with the generational touchstones throughout the recording.
He injects a bossa vibe into “Bizarre Love Triangle,” a piece originally recorded by New Order in 1986 and rearranged here to include jazz chanteuse Jane Monheit (both she and DeSare deliver one of the verses in Portuguese). “I always thought this song would make a great duet,” says DeSare. “It wasn’t written that way originally, but I had this thought that if the lines were swapped within the song, like a real conversation about a relationship, it could work really well.”
DeSare’s upbeat take on the Hoagy Carmichael/Sidney Arodin 1930 chestnut, “Lazy River,” is based on an arrangement recorded by Bobby Darin in 1961. “Darin basically rewrote the melody,” says DeSare. “Part of that song is a nod to his style, and the ending sounds a bit like ‘Mack the Knife,’ so you could say this track is a tribute to both the song itself and to Bobby Darin.”
The swing version of “Easy Lover,” the 1984 pop duet between Genesis frontman Phil Collins and Earth Wind & Fire alum Phillip Bailey, presented a stylistic challenge, says DeSare. “When you listen to the original, it’s just not designed to be a swing song, really,” he says. “I just took the original melody and the lyric, and I had to reinvent everything else. My goal was to make it like a Count Basie-type swing tune.”
One of the most powerful moments on Radio Show is DeSare’s stirring rendition of Bob Dylan’s seminal protest song, “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” prefaced by a montage of quick sound bites from the decades leading up to the 1960s. “I had played that song live a few times, and it’s a really powerful statement,” says DeSare. “Dylan’s original version – one guitar, one harmonica, one voice – is very much of the ‘60s. But if you reframe the tune with piano and sing it in a different way in a different key, it sounds like an entirely new song.”
While much of DeSare’s career to date has been about doing his part to preserve the Great American Songbook, he maintains that that canon could be more broadly defined as the 20th century grows smaller in the rearview mirror. “Most of the great singers of the 20th century are gone,” he says. “But there’s a new generation of people, including myself, who are writing and recording in this genre that has just as much to do with a particular style as a particular song catalog. With Radio Show, I wanted to open this style up to songs that are not just limited to the Great American Songbook. The idea is to look at this style of music, but from the perspective of a new generation.”
Tune in to yesteryear and hear the future. Tony DeSare’s Radio Show is on the air.
Tony DeSare’s Radio Show (CD-83689) is due at retail on January 20, 2009.
Hey sweets. Wishing you success and happiness. PS... Guess where I wound up last Fri night? Sessions. haha. ( Only a lot more coherent this time...hehehe)
I hope all's good for you these days. I still remember how good you and your band were when you played here in Los Angeles awhile back.
It’s been over a year since my profile here on MySpace has been active, which is all explained on my posted One Sheet. Got new revised tracks up, new profile…started a blog about music genres…come Listen. Ron Armstrong/Just Around The Bend…Again: “Right At The Meeting Point, Where Country Meets Blues of Blues, Meets California Rock”.
