Jazz meets Country Blues and Folk in the voice of Morgan Duke, native New Yorker turned West Virginian. This Jazz-infused Country CD features songs by Cole Porter, Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, Johnny Mercer, Randy Newman and Cat Stevens.
Morgan is an accomplished musical theatre actress and has worked extensively in regional and Chicago theatres and is currently a company member of Greenbrier Valley Theatre, West Virginia's year-round professional theatre company. She is a 1999 Fellow of the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center's Cabaret Symposium where she studied with Margaret Whiting and Julie Wilson.
In a review that will appear in this May 2006's Cabaret Scenes, Jeff Rossen writes:
"A few years back, Morgan Duke (performing at the time as Morgan Sturges) took to the stage at Davenport’s and gorgeously merged the worlds of country music and cabaret in her joyous and heartfelt This Cowgirl’s Got the Blues. What she demonstrated with a beguiling charm is that cabaret can embrace any form of music -- well, ok, we’re not likely to encounter a show that will feature this year’s Oscar-winning song, Hard Out Here For a Pimp -- if one puts one’s heart in the music. And on her debut recording, Duke does just that as she crafts an absolutely faultless journey of wonder.
"It’s easy to imagine the grand mountains of the great western states forming a backdrop for her performance when she begins lamenting that I Lost My Sugar in Salt Lake City and that she’s A Little Bit Bluer Than That. Duke effortlessly weaves standards with regional creations, settling into a romantic sway on Cole Porter’s Easy to Love and simply mesmerizing plea to Talk to Me Baby, turning up the heat with Randy Newman’s Let’s Burn Down the Cornfield and getting to the core of the anger and disillusion of Yusuf Islams’ (Cat Stevens’) Trouble, reflecting with, alternately, melancholy and incense over lost love on Night Life and My Sweet Love Ain’t Around. Ending with a simply stated Ae Fond Kiss, Duke closes a musical storybook that at times touches the heart, excites it and breaks it. The simple and uncluttered musical arrangements -- especially the exemplary stylings of guitarist Don Cordes -- create ideal settings as Duke tells her tales of love in what is nothing less than a flawless performance. (****)"
More praise: "I can tell you Duke has an ethereal voice that would prove captivating on any stage....If this CD is any indication of her future plans, Duke will be spending more time on strictly musical stages." -- gazz.com, The Weekly Arts & Entertainment Guide of the Charleston Gazette in Charleston, West Virginia
http://www.thegazz.com/guide/blogs/localbands
Sundry praise:
"Duke possesses a beautiful voice and a magnetic stage presence."
- Al Gordon, The News-Gazette (Lexington, Virginia)
"If I am lucky enough to get to Heaven, I hope the angels sing just like her."
-- Mountain Messenger (West Virginia)
Check out the artist's website:
http://www.morganduke.com
Track List:
1. I Lost My Sugar in Salt Lake City
2. A Little Bluer Than That
3. Easy To Love
4. Life's Railway to Heaven
5. Let's Burn Down the Cornfield
6. Talk To Me Baby
7. Trouble
8. Montana Moon
9. Night Life
10. My Sweet Love Ain't Around
11. Since I Fell For You
12. Ae Fond Kiss
Suggested CDs:Other Genres:
Morgan is an accomplished musical theatre actress and has worked extensively in regional and Chicago theatres and is currently a company member of Greenbrier Valley Theatre, West Virginia's year-round professional theatre company. She is a 1999 Fellow of the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center's Cabaret Symposium where she studied with Margaret Whiting and Julie Wilson.
In a review that will appear in this May 2006's Cabaret Scenes, Jeff Rossen writes:
"A few years back, Morgan Duke (performing at the time as Morgan Sturges) took to the stage at Davenport’s and gorgeously merged the worlds of country music and cabaret in her joyous and heartfelt This Cowgirl’s Got the Blues. What she demonstrated with a beguiling charm is that cabaret can embrace any form of music -- well, ok, we’re not likely to encounter a show that will feature this year’s Oscar-winning song, Hard Out Here For a Pimp -- if one puts one’s heart in the music. And on her debut recording, Duke does just that as she crafts an absolutely faultless journey of wonder.
"It’s easy to imagine the grand mountains of the great western states forming a backdrop for her performance when she begins lamenting that I Lost My Sugar in Salt Lake City and that she’s A Little Bit Bluer Than That. Duke effortlessly weaves standards with regional creations, settling into a romantic sway on Cole Porter’s Easy to Love and simply mesmerizing plea to Talk to Me Baby, turning up the heat with Randy Newman’s Let’s Burn Down the Cornfield and getting to the core of the anger and disillusion of Yusuf Islams’ (Cat Stevens’) Trouble, reflecting with, alternately, melancholy and incense over lost love on Night Life and My Sweet Love Ain’t Around. Ending with a simply stated Ae Fond Kiss, Duke closes a musical storybook that at times touches the heart, excites it and breaks it. The simple and uncluttered musical arrangements -- especially the exemplary stylings of guitarist Don Cordes -- create ideal settings as Duke tells her tales of love in what is nothing less than a flawless performance. (****)"
More praise: "I can tell you Duke has an ethereal voice that would prove captivating on any stage....If this CD is any indication of her future plans, Duke will be spending more time on strictly musical stages." -- gazz.com, The Weekly Arts & Entertainment Guide of the Charleston Gazette in Charleston, West Virginia
http://www.thegazz.com/guide/blogs/localbands
Sundry praise:
"Duke possesses a beautiful voice and a magnetic stage presence."
- Al Gordon, The News-Gazette (Lexington, Virginia)
"If I am lucky enough to get to Heaven, I hope the angels sing just like her."
-- Mountain Messenger (West Virginia)
Check out the artist's website:
http://www.morganduke.com
Track List:
1. I Lost My Sugar in Salt Lake City
2. A Little Bluer Than That
3. Easy To Love
4. Life's Railway to Heaven
5. Let's Burn Down the Cornfield
6. Talk To Me Baby
7. Trouble
8. Montana Moon
9. Night Life
10. My Sweet Love Ain't Around
11. Since I Fell For You
12. Ae Fond Kiss
Suggested CDs:Other Genres:
- FOLK: Folk Blues
- COUNTRY: Country Folk
- SOLO FEMALE ARTIST