Pizzarelli and Molaskey bring their breezy jazz to Orange County

By Al Rudis, Staff Writer
The headlines are heavy, and the outlook for 2009 is decidedly ponderous, but there's a chance to lighten up and waft on the breeze next weekend at the intimate Samueli Theater of the Orange County Performing Arts Center.
Guitarist and singer John Pizzarelli and his wife, singer Jessica Molaskey, will turn the theater into a jazz club for a four-day residency, and their brand of music is mostly airy, pleasant and smile-inducing.

"Laughing, that's a happy habit," sings Molaskey in the first song of her recent album, "A Kiss to Build A Dream On." From this album and Pizzarelli's recent disk, "With a Song in My Heart," it seems as though this couple, in the second marriage for both, is reflecting marital and musical happiness in performance.
"Yeah, we're very happy people, aren't we, darling?" Pizzarelli said during a phone interview last week from a cabin in Kent, N.Y. In the background, Molaskey's voice responded, "We're so lucky!"

"Actually, we are lucky," Pizzarelli said, "Because we do get to do what we want to do and make the kind of records we want to make and sing the songs we want to sing. It promotes happiness."
Pizzarelli performed with the Long Beach Symphony Pops in the fall of 2007, but this time it will be just himself on guitar and Molaskey on piano, bass and drums. Both will do vocals as well.

"We're on stage together for 90 percent of the evening," he said. "We do medleys at the beginning, in the middle and at the end. And then around those points in the show, she'll do a number, I'll do a number and we talk a little."
Pizzarelli said the talk is virtually the same as what they do on their weekly nationally syndicated radio program, "Radio Deluxe," which used to be on KJAZ in Long Beach. Now you have to go to 1450 AM in San Diego or 1510 in the Inland Empire to hear it.
They talk about themselves and music and introduce recordings in the weekly two-hour radio show. "We sort of complement each other and we joke with each other, but we don't get mean spirited, because we like each other," said Pizzarelli. "I've never been with anybody like her. We've always liked each other from the first day we met."

The meeting was in a Broadway revue called "Dream," based on the songs of Johnny Mercer. The show ran only three months, but the couple has been together 11 years. The family includes their daughter and his son.
The son of another famous jazz guitarist, Bucky Pizzarelli, he's patterned his career on such instrumentalist-singers as Nat King Cole (in his early career), Bobby Troup and Chet Baker.

"Their groups played jazz, and it wasn't a full-throated approach to singing," Pizzarelli said. "And there was good humor. "Those are the things I liked about them and tried to bring to my career: great jazz and interesting songs, standards but also interesting patter songs or fun songs or sad songs, but definitely more rhythmic and lighter in approach."
Even within this format, Pizzarelli made changes.

"From performing as a singer and guitarist for 25 years, I understand my voice better, and my whole delivery and the process of singing in clubs and on record," he said. "You figure out along the way what works better and how you can make the most out of what you have as an instrument."
A good example of his approach is the song "I Have Dreamed" on his new album.

"I heard Sinatra's version on the radio the other day," he said. "And there's this beautiful orchestra thing at the end. He sings one chorus, and he finishes with a `loved by you' with a big crash, bang, boom. Whereas, I thought, for me, it would work better as a bossa nova in a different kind of harmonic setting."
On his album, the song is light and wistful, in contrast to Sinata's dark agony.

It seems as though he can give the "Pizzarelli treatment" to virtually every standard. Were there any songs that he wouldn't attempt?
"There's not any specific songs I would say, oh, I would never sing that song," he said, but then paused to hear a suggestion from his wife.

"Yeah," he said, "`Alfie's' the one I wouldn't sing," and he laughed. "`Alfie' and `Lush Life' (a classic agony song), at the moment."
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