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Jeff Beck

"Performing This Week...Live at Ronnie Scott's"
Eagle

Jimmy Page wrote "Beck's Bolero" around 1966 for his Yardbirds
bandmate, Jeff Beck. The jazzy rocker serves as historical benchmark
and opening track for this searing album of live, instrumental
performances recorded at London's preeminent jazz club in 2007.

Beck may have evolved into one of the world's foremost jazz-rock
"fusioneers." Every note he plays, no matter how fast, drips with
emotional meaning. This is as true for his version of Stevie Wonder's
"'Cause We Ended as Lovers" as it is for his trio of tracks by
Mahavishnu Orchestra members John McLaughlin, Billy Cobham, and Jan
Hammer.

There's a conversational quality to Beck's guitar-playing, whether
he's reinterpreting the Beatles' "A Day in the Life" or evoking Jimi
Hendrix's divine squall in "Big Block." Jeff Beck still has much
to say, and he comes across loud and clear on one of the year's best
live albums.


Omara Portuondo
"Gracias"
Montuno/World Village

"The life I have left will be spent smiling," sings 78-year-old
Havana legend Omara Portuondo in "Lo Que Me Queda Por Vivir" ("The
Time I Have Left to Live"), a song that arrives late in this stunningly
beautiful album full of valedictory overtones.

Portuondo was a Cuban star long before she sang with The Buena Vista
Social Club in 1996. This album includes luminous new recordings of
"Adiós, Felicada" ("Goodbye, Happiness"), "Vuela, Pena" ("Fly Away, Pain"),
and other deliciously melancholy tunes from her six-decade career.

Uruguay's Jorge Drexler joins Portuondo on the Brazilian-tinged title
track her wrote for her. Portuondo obviously loves Brazilian music,
and one of that country's greatest songwriters, Chico Buarque, joins
her on his beautiful and fatalistic "O Que Será (A Flor de
Terra)" ("Oh What Will Be").

Portuondo's deep, rich voice reveals multiple layers of feeling in
each of these bittersweet gems. "Gracias" concludes with "Drume
Negrita" ("Sleep, My Little Black Baby"), the lullaby she sang for her
son, her granddaughter, and now-accompanied only by percussion and
Cameroonian singer Richard Bona-for us.