Cool Hunting

Add a little international flare to your romantic dinner with Japanese singer Jun's album of love songs. Born on a farm in Japan, Jun began singing along with Japanese and American pop songs he heard on the radio before he could walk. After a career as a caberet soloist in Japan and appearances Off-Broadway in NYC, he has recorded Always Loving You—Love Songs in 5 Languages, his first album.

Jun and his music director and arranger, Marvie Asakura (who played with the legendary Duke Ellington), take you on a compelling journey of love and its many faces through novel arrangements of classic songs by Porter, Trenet, Styne, Rogers, Manzenaro, Tanimura, Hatutori, and Sato. All of the tracks are accompanied by a string quartet and piano/jazz guitar/bass rhythm section that combines the aesthetics of Japanese folk music and the American swing era to create a funky, vintage structure for Jun's soothing vocals in French, Italian, Spanish, English and his native Japenese.

The album also has some serious moments and ends with a stirring rendition of Seeger's Where Have All the Flowers Gone with an abrupt line of unaccompanied spoken text, "They are all in uniform."

Available from Amazon.

Contributed by Edwin Cahill