Listen & tracks
18 works · 53:36
-
1 Who Will Buy? Lionel Bart 2:48
-
2 The Letter Duet Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 2:53
-
3 Danny Boy 2:50
-
4 Rhythm of Life Cy Coleman 3:17
-
5 The Fool on the Hill John Lennon 2:37
-
6 O mio babbino caro Giacomo Puccini 2:11
-
7 All I Ask of You Andrew Lloyd Webber 3:40
-
8 Anthem Benny Andersson 3:10
-
9 The Wrong Note Rag Leonard Bernstein 2:32
-
10 Our Time Stephen Sondheim 2:56
-
11 Nocturne Gaetano Donizetti 2:55
-
12 One Hand, One Heart Leonard Bernstein 3:14
-
13 You Are My Heart's Delight Franz Lehár 3:31
-
14 Let's Call the Whole Thing Off George Gershwin 2:40
-
15 Papa, Can You Hear Me? Michel Legrand 3:48
-
16 The Cat Duet Gioachino Rossini 3:10
-
17 The Gendarmes Duet Jacques Offenbach 2:26
-
18 The Drinking Song Giuseppe Verdi 2:58
The programme ranges across Oliver!, West Side Story, The Marriage of Figaro, The Phantom of the Opera and La Traviata, with favourites such as Danny Boy, The Fool on the Hill and The Gendarmes Duet.
Pot-Pourri bring panache to this mixed bill of music-theatre, opera and popular song. The four singers appear in full ensemble and in featured duets and solos, resting on a clear blend of two sopranos, tenor and baritone.
Reviews
Pot-Pourri is a group to make the critical jaw drop. They make no apologies for being good singers! During the last thirty years, from the Swingle Singers onwards, the main group style has been that jazzy, cool, vaguely irritating scat style that sends up songs rather than interpreting them. Even the best a cappella groups have become comedy acts rather than musical acts. There is no lack of fun on Rhythm of Life, the latest CD by Melbourne based group Pot-Pourri. What gives please, though, is their commitment to fine singing. This carries them (Tania de Jong, Antoinette Halloran, Craig Macdonald and Jonathan Morton) through an enormous range of material, from 'The Letter Duet' through Lennon and McCartney's 'The Fool on the Hill'… Resting solidly on the strength of two sopranos, baritone and a tenor, the vocal sound remains satisfying throughout the CD.
They combine harmoniously and fluently with great style and panache … a fine gift for any music lover
Artists
Pot-Pourri
vocal ensemble
Melbourne vocal ensemble Pot-Pourri blends opera, music theatre, cabaret, comedy and a touch of didgeridoo into accessible live shows and recordings. Formed in 1987, the group has toured widely in Australia and overseas.
Lionel Bart
composer
Lionel Bart wrote the book, music and lyrics for Oliver!, the Dickens musical whose songs have long outlived the West End run. He also penned hit pop numbers and other stage scores that helped shape postwar British musical theatre.
Leonard Bernstein
composer
Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) was an American composer, conductor and pianist whose Broadway scores, concert works and tireless advocacy reshaped how wide audiences meet classical music.
George Gershwin
composer
George Gershwin (September 26, 1898 – July 11, 1937) was an American composer and pianist whose music spanned popular song, Broadway and the classical concert hall, leaving melodies that remain widely known.
Ira Gershwin
composer
Ira Gershwin wrote the words that made twentieth-century American song unforgettable: sly, tender, and built to swing. His lyrics for George Gershwin and others still give singers and jazz ensembles their sharpest material.
Franz Lehár
composer
Franz Lehár (1870–1948) was an Austro-Hungarian composer best known for his operettas. His most celebrated work is The Merry Widow, and songs from his stage works remain widely performed.
John Lennon
composer
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.
Paul McCartney
composer
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.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
composer
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He wrote over 600 works, many of them pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic and choral music, and remains among the most enduringly popular of classical composers.
Giacomo Puccini
composer
Puccini’s operas live on melody that climbs and breaks, on love, jealousy and sacrifice drawn with verismo heat. La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly and Turandot still fill houses because the drama is already inside the tune.
Gioachino Rossini
composer
Rossini's operas crackle with melodic invention and theatrical pace: comic peaks such as The Barber of Seville and La Cenerentola sit beside grand statements like Guillaume Tell, all driven by rhythmic snap and bright instrumental colour.
Stephen Sondheim
composer
Stephen Sondheim wrote music and lyrics that pushed the American musical into darker, more ambivalent territory. His songs move with intricate craft: sharp rhymes, restless harmony, and melodies that catch at regret, wit and longing.
Giuseppe Verdi
composer
Giuseppe Verdi wrote the operas that still define the Italian stage: Rigoletto, La traviata, Aida, Otello. His music turns private passion and public fate into melody audiences know by heart and never tire of hearing.
Andrew Lloyd Webber
composer
Andrew Lloyd Webber writes musical theatre that lodges in the ear and stays there: soaring ballads, rock-inflected biblical retellings, and scores that turn novels and poems into long-running stage worlds.
Benny Andersson
composer
David Ashton-Smith
composer
David Ashton-Smith is a singer, choral director and music director. His recordings include arrangements and conducting for music-theatre and opera programmes, and choir direction for soundtrack.
Richard M. Brown
composer
Cy Coleman
composer
Cy Coleman (1929–2004) was an American composer, songwriter and jazz pianist. His Broadway and popular songs include Rhythm of Life from the musical Sweet Charity.
Gaetano Donizetti
composer
Gaetano Donizetti wrote more than seventy operas in the early Romantic bel canto style. His scores range from sparkling comedies such as L'elisir d'amore and Don Pasquale to tragic dramas including Lucia di Lammermoor and Anna Bolena.
Michel Legrand
composer
Michel Legrand (1932–2019) was a French composer, arranger, conductor, jazz pianist and singer, known for more than two hundred film and television scores and many songs that entered the standard repertoire.
Kathleen McGuire
composer
Kathleen McGuire is an Australian conductor, arranger and composer, born in Melbourne in 1965. On this label she is represented by vocal arrangements of popular song and music theatre.
Jacques Offenbach
composer
Jacques Offenbach was a German-born French composer, cellist and impresario of the romantic period. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann.
Performers
- Pot-Pourri · vocal ensemble
- Tania de Jong · soprano · tracks 2, 7, 11, 15 and 16
- Antoinette Halloran · soprano · tracks 2, 6, 12, 14 and 16
- Craig MacDonald · baritone · tracks 3, 11, 14 and 17
- Jonathan Morton · tenor · tracks 7, 12, 13 and 17
Details
- List price
- $25.00 AUD
- Total playing time
- 53 minutes 36 seconds
- Release date
- 1995
- Categories
- Classical, Vocal
- Genres
- Vocal & Opera, Stage & Screen
- Musical work copyright
- © 1995 Move Records
- Sound recording copyright
- ℗ 1995 Move Records
- Catalogue
- MCD 058
- EAN
- 9314574005820
More to explore
Silver: Celebrating 25 Years
Pot-Pourri marks twenty-five years with Silver, a seventh album that mixes contemporary classics, Broadway, and opera into one sparkling programme.
Something Familiar! Something Peculiar!
Pot-Pourri’s second Move album ranges freely across Broadway, opera, musical theatre and popular song, pairing cherished favourites with sharper comic turns in chamber-scale arrangements.
Crossing Paths
Ensemble Liaison and the Tony Gould Trio take turns across the programme: each piece is heard first in a scored reading, then in an improvised jazz response that opens the same melodic and harmonic material to fresh colour.
Summer Waves
Len Vorster plays a personal recital of short piano works by Gershwin, de Falla, Lord Berners, Berkeley, Field, Grieg, Debussy, Poulenc and Ravel, drawn toward summer light, dance rhythm and nocturne stillness.
Enfantines I
Katherine Day’s first solo album gathers piano works by Joachim, Krenek, Granados and Mozart chosen for young players. Her finely sculpted readings treat often-overlooked teaching repertoire with the care usually reserved for the concert canon.
Contra
Contra Guitar Duo’s debut recording presents the lyricism, complex rubato and colour the pair most enjoy in two-guitar playing, across a short programme of romantic and contemporary works.