The German Projekt CD
"German Songs from the Twenties and Thirties"

06/2009 Doug Ramsey, Rifftides

Andrea Fultz, The German Projekt .
As we pointed out a couple of years ago,
Louis Armstrong made "Mack The Knife" a jazz standard, but few jazz
artists have explored Kurt Weill's songs of satire, outrage and beauty
from The Threepenny Opera, Happy End and Mahagonny.
For a Rifftides discussion of exceptions, go here.
Now, we can add Andrea Fultz's new collection. Her singing is knowing,
sly, in tune, and gutsy. The daughter of a German mother and an
American father, she sings these songs from the twenties and thirties
in German, with only occasional side trips into English. She renders
German so persuasively that by the end of my first hearing of the album
I was nearly convinced that I understood the language. Whether or not
she is one, she has the phrasing and inflections of a trained actress.

Seven of the songs are by Weill and his partner Bertholt Brecht,
four by Friedrich Hollaender, another major figure in German musical
theatre between the world wars. The repertoire includes "Alabama Song",
"Bilbao Song," "Mackie Messer Moritat" ("Mack The Knife"),Hollaender's
"Falling In Love Again" and the devastating anti-fascist "Song of a
German Mother" by Brecht and Hanns Eisler.
Fultz's accompaniment is by a hip young band of San Franciscans
(piano, violin, accordian, bass and percussion). Much of this is
heavy stuff, musically and emotionally, from a period when Germany
was awash in forebodings of evil, and cynicism thrived. Thanks to the
quintet's sensitivity to the music and the canny arrangements by
accordianist Rob Reich, they manage to meld a German cabaret sensibility
with a twenty-first century grasp of jazz feeling. The songs are riveting.
This is my first encounter with Ms. Fultz. I'm looking forward to the next
and hoping that she will be a part of the future of jazz.

by Doug Ramsey

05/2009 John Sunier, Audiophile
www.audad.com

05/2009 David Wiegand, SF Chronicle
www.sfgate.com

05/2009 Chris Spector, Midwest Record
www.midwestrecord.com