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Everything old is new again: Peter CincottiBrat-pack jazz singer freshens the standards and sets his own
By Porter Anderson
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Peter Cincotti deals in music three times his age. And he's not half as full of himself as you might expect a 19-year-old to be on his way to a TriBeCa party for the release of his first CD. If anything, this latest young modern to be shepherded from stage to studio by manager Mary Ann Topper of Jazz Tree is more worried than anybody about trading in what he calls "songs well beyond my years. I'm going to wait for a while before I sing 'The Second Time Around.'" But the Manhattan-born pianist-singer-composer does chafe a little at the arty ageism he knows awaits him in the industry. "You know, years ago, when some of the all-time greatest jazz singers started out, like Billie Holiday? -- they were young and nobody complained." Cincotti – pronounced "Sin-kottee" -- has a voice somewhere between Sinatra and Connick. In fact, Harry Jr. gets unstinting gratitude from this new crooner on the block for helping out when asked. Connick once paraded the 7-year-old prodigy Peter onto the stage with him during an Atlantic City gig. As if he were a younger brother of that luscious 25-year-old chanteuse Jane Monheit (another Topper chart-topper), Cincotti has the kind of Polo-classic face that keeps black-and-white retro photographers in business. Just when they were running out of ways to throw Bogart-era shadows onto Connick, too. This kid has timing. Like Monheit and Diana Krall before him, Cincotti appears born to that new brat pack of genuinely gifted jazz younglings beloved of record execs who hear the jazz-is-dying walking bass everywhere they go. Downbeat predictions of jazz's demise may add a haggard charm to the genre but they do little to cheer those devotees who say the form deserves a healthy chunk of space in any intelligent music lover's interests. Changing the rules
So Cincotti may be the best-looking newbie in the nursery because he's writing music, not just reviving old tunes. In a gutsy move, he and producer Phil Ramone -- who worked with Streisand, Sinatra, Manilow and Billy Joel -- open the eponymous new CD with a Cincotti original, the swing-sassy "I Changed the Rules." Its lyrics are a mother-daughter act, the contribution of Cynthia Cincotti and Peter's sister Pia. Don't keep me waiting at the door / I'm not some cat that you ignore / Keep on whining, and I'll keep on declining -- baby, I changed the rules. Mom, sis and brother also collaborated on "Are You the One?" and "Lovers, Secrets, Lies." Cincotti says that by the time his second CD comes out -- and he may be young but he's too smart to say how soon that might be -- he hopes to be writing both his own music and lyrics. And even when he turns to the standards, he likes coming to them cold. "I like 'Sway' on the album," he says, "because I didn't know a whole lot of other people's versions before I did mine." That's a Latin-sultry little 1954 number by Norman Gimbel and Pablo Ruiz that you may have heard in the opening of the film soundtrack for "Dark City." When it came time to work on the song, "I just read the sheet music and went in," he says. The result is one of the most atmospheric tracks on the CD. By contrast, he says, "When I sing 'Ain't Misbehavin',' I can't help but hear Fats Waller." In another original turn, Cincotti has worked together the old Beatles stalwart "Fool on the Hill" with Eden Ahbez's haunting "Nature Boy." The merger produces a gracefully meditative moment on the album. Music as an outlet
That tone is echoed when Cincotti talks about the loss of his father. "It happened when I was 13, and I was between sets at a club here in New York," he says. His dad was the victim of a heart attack and his son saw him die. "It puts things into perspective," Cincotti says. "The music is an outlet for me. Other people have their outlets -- sports or writing or whatever it may be. But I know now that anything that comes my way, whether it's death or heartbreak, I can use the music as an outlet. My father always made the best of a situation." The lesson wasn't lost on Cincotti, who last year became the youngest artist to play a monthlong engagement at the Algonquin's Oak Room in New York. He's just finished a return stint there and is being booked for a tour likely to take him to Europe and Japan. Already , the dates are piling up -- he plays Palm Beach, Florida, later this month, Catalina's in Los Angeles in April, and a performance at Yale. Speaking of school, he's a sophomore at Columbia University. "Up until now, I've carried a full load of courses. It looks like this is turning into a lot of traveling now, so me and the dean are going to have to sit down and talk. The way it's gone so far, one week I concentrate on my music, the next on schoolwork." Will he put off a degree to follow the career? "Well, if I have certain opportunities in life, I have to take them. And college will always be there." If the critics are right -- The New York Times' Stephen Holden writes about Cincotti's "youthful fervor and a personality all his own" -- then Cincotti may be major before he even declares one. He may be working overtime on choosing material appropriate to his age. "The Rainbow Connection" that closes his album probably goes a bit more toward the juvenile than necessary -- but Cincotti does it heartfelt justice. "I don't feel like I have a mission" to promote jazz to his own generation, he says. "I don't want to shove anything down people's throats. Sure, I'd love people of all ages to be my audience. But I want to do music that's truly representative of where I am in life. So for me, it's about the music and about developing as a musician." Peter Cincotti's CD, "Peter Cincotti," has its official release from Concord Records on March 11. Cincotti is joined on the album by bassist David Finck, percussionist Kenny Washington and Scott Kreitzer on tenor sax.
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