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Kolleen Park’s favorite musical songs

Various artists

“Kolleen’s Musical Choice”

(Universal Music)

Kolleen Park, a popular music director and TV celebrity, shares her favorite musical numbers with her fans on a new CD.

A musical compilation album titled “Kolleen’s Musical Choice,” it contains 29 songs from 19 hit musicals from all around the world. The list of songs includes “Dancing Queen” from the musical “Mama Mia,” “Memory” from the musical “Cats” and “All I Ask of You” a duet by Sarah Brightman and Steve Barton from the musical “The Phantom of the Opera.”

The half-Korean, half-Lithuanian U.S. showbiz figure shot to fame here after immaculately conducting an amateur choir on the KBS 2TV entertainment show “Qualifications of a Man” two years ago. The music director shares her personal reviews of songs she has selected for the new album, offering the audience a chance to understand her views on music. Her previous CD titled “Kolleen Selects,” sold 40,000 copies within two months of its release last year.

(christory@heraldcorp.com)


Spalding blends pop, jazz on new CD

Esperanza Spalding

“Radio Music Society”

(Heads Up)

It’s somehow fitting that Esperanza Spalding sang the Louis Armstrong hit “What a Wonderful World” at the Oscars, because her career arc bears certain similarities to the jazz legend’s. She began primarily as an instrumentalist, developed her own distinctive vocal style to accompany her bass playing, and on her new CD, she has embraced the pop music of her day without sacrificing her jazz roots.

The CD complements the bassist-vocalist’s previous release, “Chamber Music Society,” an intimate, acoustic melding of classical, jazz and world music. However, “Radio Music Society” is an extroverted, electric fusion of R&B, neo-soul and hip-hop with jazz, performed by a genre-spanning lineup including R&B singer Lalah Hathaway, rapper Q-Tip acting as a producer, and jazz drummers Jack DeJohnette and Terri Lyne Carrington.

“Radio Song,” about flipping through the dial until a catchy tune grabs you, opens her most accessible album that spotlights her singing and songwriting skills.

The track has the dance beats, funky bass grooves, horn section accents and background vocals common to pop music, but Spalding’s arrangement veers off in unexpected directions with shifting rhythms and some wordless vocalizing. (AP)

Magnetic Fields blends synth, sarcasm

The Magnetic Fields

“Love at the Bottom of the Sea”

(Merge Records)

The Magnetic Fields are still on the quest for romance.

“Love at the Bottom of the Sea” finds the band once again exploring the theme of failed love affairs using biting lyricism, thanks to leader and songwriter Stephin Merritt, but this time with added synth.

Rather than traditional love songs lamenting pain and anguish, the Magnetic Fields mock the heightened emotions of love with sarcastic lyrics.

“Andrew in Drag” is a dreamy ditty in which Merritt sings about being in love with a cross-dresser: The moment seeing Andrew in a dress means that Merritt can’t love anyone else again, and causes him to ponder his “misspent youth.”

“Quick!” is a plea for a lover to shape up or ship out. Its lyrics are again another example of the clever wordplay employed by Merritt, as they take unexpected twists like “what a waste of all those beers,” when you would expect the line to be “what a waste of all those years.”

“My Husband’s Pied-a-Terre,” about an adulterous partner, starts out slow and mournful, but the hilarious rhyming ― “pied--terre’ coupled with ”derriere“ for example ― illustrates just what a talented songwriter Merritt actually is. (AP)