Jazz
Chasing Fireflies Farm Productions · 22 March 2026
“Overjoyed” (6:14) opens the album and is the longest thing on it: the song Stevie Wonder released on In Square Circle (1985), taken here at a far slower tempo, with Rick Roe’s piano placing short voicings under the voice and never once competing with it. You Are There is exactly that for thirty-six and a half minutes: voice and piano, no bass, no drums, eight tracks.
None of the eight is theirs. There is “Never Will I Marry” (3:36), written by Frank Loesser for Greenwillow in 1960 and the one place where the keys really brighten; “Ugly Beauty” (4:26), the only waltz Thelonious Monk ever wrote; “When October Goes” (4:59), Johnny Mercer’s posthumous lyric set to music by Barry Manilow in 1984; “Lullaby of the Leaves” (3:09), the shortest cut and the one with the most momentum; and “Here’s to Life” (4:07) to close, the Artie Butler and Phyllis Molinary song Shirley Horn made her own in 1992. “Over the Rainbow” (4:51) sits in the middle.
D’Angelo sings with a clear soprano and phrases like someone telling a story from a small stage, and the record’s virtue is that she never pushes the volume: she lets the lyric carry the weight and the piano supply the colour. Roe works almost entirely in the middle register with the original arrangements in plain view, which serves “Overjoyed” well and leaves “Over the Rainbow” a little stranded.
The title, though, came with the problem built in. You Are There is also the name of the album Roberta Gambarini and Hank Jones recorded in September 2005 and EmArcy released in 2007: voice and piano, with the same Johnny Mandel and Dave Frishberg song for a title. Standing in the same spot under the same name invites a comparison this record did not need. And there is the format: six of the eight tracks come in under five minutes, nothing about the instrumentation changes across the programme, and the difference between one piece and the next has to be looked for in the phrasing. It is there, and it repays the attention, but the album never asks for it.
Rating: 6.8/10
Text by Aina Torrents