(New York, NY) September 8, 2022 – Celia Berk, the multi-award-winning vocalist, has just released her much anticipated third studio album, Now That I Have Everything. Music Director/Pianist Tedd Firth revives the classic format of the Nat King Cole trio with bassists David Finck and Jay Leonhart and guitarist Matt Munisteri, along with percussionist Rex Benincasa on several tracks.
Produced by Tedd Firth and Grammy and Tony Award-winning sound designer Scott Lehrer, Now That I Have Everything features the kinds of hidden gems by great
songwriters that are Celia’s trademark, including those of Sammy Cahn, Hoagy Carmichael, Ervin Drake, Hugh Martin, Carly Simon, Billy Strayhorn, James Van Heusen and Stevie Wonder. Many of the songs were featured in COMES LOVE, a 2019 show Celia created with pianist Sean Gough, who shares some album arrangement credits with Tedd Firth.
Celia includes her rendition of Carly Simon’s “It Happens Everyday.” She is the first and only artist known to cover this song. It’s a gem hidden in plain sight.
“It’s on her 1983 Hello Big Man album, and if anyone else has covered it I haven’t found that version,” explains Celia. “I read her memoir Boys In The Trees, never expecting to find a reference to this song. But there it was, in the context of the end of her first great love affair.
She writes how they would reminisce, ‘both of us aware we had been in that stage of our relationship where couples who love each other say good-bye, in very slow motion, before moving on to others.’ The idea of a slow motion good-bye stayed with me, and I asked guitarist Matt Munisteri to consider himself the “boy” of the song. I can hear his wistful guitar speaking to the ‘girl’ of the song, can’t you?”
Author and journalist Will Friedwald, who wrote the liner notes in the album, says “I think of Celia as a musical explorer who sallies forth in search of amazing songs that the rest of the world has either ignored or forgotten. Then, having excavated the raw material, she switches from adventurer to artisan, crafting each arrangement in careful collaboration with her essential aide-de-camp and music director, Tedd Firth. Finally, when she presents what she has come up with, it’s not like your usual singer-audience relationship where there’s a physical or psychological gap.
It’s less a performance than an intimate dialogue between two close friends. She’s sharing every precious gem one at a time, as if the two of you were sitting next to each other. ‘Listen to this one… and this… wait till you hear this.’ As it happens, this particular gift translates very well into the medium of recording. The communication is entirely between you and her, and any other people would be superfluous.”
