Annie Booth Trio: Here, There and Everywhere: The Beatles Songbook (Live)
Annie Booth Music

Anyone thinking of covering another artist's material should look to pianist Annie Booth's handling of The Beatles' catalogue as a first-rate guide. Start by offsetting better-known fare (“Let It Be”) with deeper cuts (“Hey Bulldog”) and then re-fresh the tunes with imaginative new arrangements, such that “Something” becomes an uptempo samba and “Come Together” receives a reggae-tinged makeover. Top it off by performing the material live with your longstanding trio mates, bassist Patrick McDevitt and drummer Alejandro Castaño, in front of an appreciative Denver audience at Mighty Fine Productions on June 18, 2023 and what you get is the terrific Here, There and Everywhere, as fine a Beatles cover album as there is. It also doesn't hurt that her fabulous piano playing is all over the album.

The Colorado-based Booth's been making a name for herself over many years as an arranger, composer, educator, and jazz pianist. In addition to her trio, she fronts the Annie Booth Sextet and eighteen-piece Annie Booth Big Band and has issued albums notable for their broad scope and imagination. Testifying to that range, she last year released Flowers of Evil, an art song/chamber music disc that sets Charles Baudelaire's poetry to music, and in 2022 the sextet album Alpenglow and before that a set coupling her trio with vocalist Max Wellman on an album of American songbook standards. Her gifts as a pianist have made her an in-demand side-musician for other artists too, and Booth's also a highly respected jazz educator currently on faculty at the University of Denver's Lamont School of Music.

The opening “Mother Nature's Son” engages immediately with its soulful rendering of the song's melodies and its locomotive pulse. McDevitt enlivens the tune with electric bass solos, while Booth complements his playing with block chords and her own inimitable sparkle. Throughout this splendid recording, her playing's distinguished by intuitive command, imagination, and an overall approach that sees her locating that sweet spot between hewing to a song's melody and liberally elaborating upon it—as even a single listen to “Let It Be” shows, never does the essence of a song get lost when she's playing.

After the trio gives “Hey Bulldog” an aggressively swinging overhaul (replete with a dynamic solo turn from Castaño), “Here, There and Everywhere” features the trio at its lyrical best. With Booth giving sensitive (and occasionally blues-inflected) voice to the melodies, the song exemplifies the kind of dignified intimacy one associates with the finest jazz piano trios. A luminous ballad-styled treatment of “She's Leaving Home” proves as rewarding, as does the group's suitably radiant take on “Here Comes the Sun.”

While a rousing soul-gospel rendering of “Let It Be” offers the perfect outlet for Booth's bluesier side, the group's versions of “Norwegian Wood” and “Because” re-imagine them as an infectious Afro-jazz workout and sultry tango, respectively. Elsewhere, the trio elevates George Harrison's “Something” with a punchy, high-flying treatment that threads infectious Latin swing and a rollicking feel into its design, electric bassist Glenn Booth guests on a funky riff on “Things We Said Today,” and in his audacious arrangement (all otherwise by Booth) of “Come Together,” McDevitt recasts it as a snappy dub-reggae tune with the bassist and drummer effectively channeling The Wailers' Aston “Family Man” Barrett and Carlton Barrett.

August 2024