There’s something in the air this time of year. It doesn’t matter where you live—in a sultry southern climate or the frozen far north—you can sense the change of season even before it arrives. There’s that certain feeling of being as ‘restless as a willow in a wind storm’ or as ‘jumpy as puppet on a string’—maybe even ‘starry eyed and vaguely discontented.’ There is no denying that these symptoms describe the singular condition, Spring Fever.  

 

This week on Riverwalk Jazz vocalists Rebecca Kilgore and Nina Ferro, along with piano master Dick Hyman, join The Jim Cullum Jazz Band on The Landing stage for a celebration of the season that beguiles, disappoints, seduces and baffles like no other.

 

Australian songstress Nina Ferro reminds us that spring is all about love and romance with "Isn't This a Lovely Day (To Be Caught in the Rain)?" by Irving Berlin from 1935, the Rogers and Hart classic "Isn't It Romantic" from 1932, and the complete version of Cole Porter's masterwork of clever double-entendre and puns, "Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love)" from 1928.

 

Pianists John Sheridan and Dick Hyman celebrate the genre of 1920s "novelty” piano pieces with their two-piano rendition of Rube Bloom's "Spring Fever" from 1926, and "Echo of Spring" by legendary Harlem stride pianist Willie "The Lion" Smith.  

 

 

Photo credit for Home Page: "Spring Fever" sheet music, 1926. Image courtesy tredwellsmusic.