The pace picks up when her nonagenarian partner soft-shoe-shuffles into view. The spotlight falls on Gaga, singing the first verses of “It’s De-Lovely” in a slow, full voice. The album opens with a blaring trumpet fanfare, like curtain-up in a vintage Manhattan nightclub. The orchestral arrangements have been done by Bennett’s longtime collaborator Jorge Calandrelli and the big band arrangements by celebrated New York orchestrator Marion Evans, an even longer-term collaborator. Musical backing comes from small jazz ensembles, an orchestra and a big band. Their new duets are songs by Cole Porter. Their tone was light-hearted but unironic, a vibrant matchup between stars from different generations. Despite some tut-tutting from critics, the odd-couple combination of dance-pop provocateur and antique crooner worked like a charm. It pairs him with a singer 60 years his junior, Lady Gaga - an unlikely foil with whom he made an album of jazz duets in 2014, Cheek to Cheek. ![]() At 95, remarkably, he still has a debonair way with a tune. ![]() Once a teen idol wowing bobby soxers - he is named in 1955’s Lolita as being among the title character’s favourite singers - Tony Bennett is now the grand old man of the Great American Songbook, one of the last links with pre-Elvis pop.
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