Love Rhapsody

Emma Sidney

Emma Sidney is a Melbourne jazz vocalist who has performed classical, opera, musical theatre and jazz since 1988. From 1999 she has worked full time as a bandleader, private teacher and performer in Australia and overseas.

Luiz Bonfá

Luiz Bonfá wrote the melodies that still define Black Orpheus, above all Manhã de Carnaval, and forged a bold, lyrical Brazilian guitar voice that bridged samba-canção and bossa nova.

Duke Ellington

Duke Ellington wrote jazz that slips past easy labels: three-minute standards thick with colour, growl and hush, and longer suites built for the voices of a big band. His orchestra was the instrument; the songs still own the night.

John Lennon

John Lennon's songs cut through styles and decades with plainspoken hooks and melodies that refuse to age. From Beatles classics to the solo anthem Imagine, his writing keeps finding new voices in jazz rooms, a cappella circles and the concert hall.

Frederick Loewe

Frederick Loewe (1901–1988) was an Austrian-American composer of Broadway musical theatre. His scores for My Fair Lady and Camelot became lasting standards and were both filmed.

Paul McCartney

Paul McCartney's songs travel far beyond their rock origins. Melodic, singable and built for reinvention, they turn up here in jazz sets, a cappella harmony, intimate guitar ballads and even harpsichord with drums and bass.

Cole Porter

Cole Porter wrote both the tunes and the words: urbane, sharp-edged songs built for the stage and still at home in the jazz room. From Night and Day to You're the Top, I Get a Kick Out of You and I Concentrate on You, his catalogue keeps singers circling back.

Eden Ahbez

Eddie DeLange

Eddie DeLange wrote the lyrics that give shape to lasting American standards. His words ride under Ellington's Solitude and Van Heusen's Darn That Dream, songs still sought for their mix of longing and swing-era ease.

Matt Dennis

Matt Dennis (1914–2002) was an American singer, pianist, bandleader, arranger and songwriter whose popular songs became lasting standards of the mid-twentieth century.

Milt Gabler

Jerry Gladstone

Arthur Herzog, Jr.

Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday shaped jazz and popular singing with a voice that phrased like a horn, bending tempo and melody around the lyric. Her own songs, among them Don't Explain and God Bless the Child, sit beside the standards she made indelible.

Bert Kaempfert

Alan Jay Lerner

The lyrics of Alan Jay Lerner, written chiefly with Frederick Loewe, shaped some of the most durable songs in musical theatre. My Fair Lady, Brigadoon, Camelot, Gigi and Paint Your Wagon still circulate as standards far beyond the stage.

Antônio Maria

Antônio Maria wrote the lyrics that made Luiz Bonfá's Manhã de Carnaval a global standard. The song's carnival dawn of longing, later sung in English as A Day in the Life of a Fool, anchors Black Orpheus and endless jazz readings.

Billy Mayhew

Irving Mills

Irving Mills (1894–1985) was an American music publisher, lyricist and jazz promoter. He co-wrote lasting standards of the swing era and built one of the major popular-music publishing houses of the twentieth century.

Ray Noble

Carl Sigman

Carl Sigman wrote lyrics that turned melodies into lasting standards, from big-band swing to film themes. His words for It's All in the Game and A Day in the Life of a Fool still travel easily into jazz and popular song.