The Art of Romance - Best Selling Relationship Book for Couples | Perfect Gift for Anniversaries, Valentine's Day & Date Nights | Enhance Love & Intimacy in Your Relationship

Hard to believe . . . but come this August, Tony Bennett turns 80. Even harder to conceive . . . Tony's `ageless' arranger/conductor for this "2006 Grammy award-winning album" - Johnny Mandel -- turns 81 this year. Even more incredibly, both men are doing their finest work! Witness this album, an exquisitely beautiful collection of love songs - many of them definitively performed on a collection that actually lives up to its auspicious title -- "The Art of Romance."Mandel, the acknowledged `dean' of today's orchestral string arrangers, told Nancy Sinatra (around the same time this album was recorded) that his "great regret" as an arranger was never getting to do even ONE album of slow, romantic songs with Frank Sinatra.In 1960 Mandel had arranged the very FIRST album for Sinatra's then brand-new `Reprise' record label: the brilliant, brassy "Ring-a-Ding Ding!" (ALWAYS one of Sinatra's personal favorite albums) comprised entirely of up-tempo swing tunes.[Johnny Mandel expressed that regret -- about never getting to arrange any slow ballads for Sinatra -- two years ago (March 25, 2004) while conducting a hauntingly beautiful orchestral supplement he'd arranged for the final track ("Silent Night") - on the "Sinatra Christmas Collection" CD (2004).]Well . . . if you're the sort of person who ever wondered what sort of classic, ballad arrangements Johnny Mandel might have produced for the OTHER "best, male popular singer" (Sinatra singled out Tony as his favorite male singer) . . . your question is answered here, I believe.-----I ordered this album from Amazon.com a week ago -- BEFORE it won the Grammy for its category, earlier this month: It was there in the mailbox, waiting for me when I got home this evening: Now I can't stop listening to it! It's one of those rare albums you may never tire of hearing - and each time, find something new that you hadn't spotted on previous listenings.Arranged (mostly) by Mandel -- who also conducts the huge orchestra -- "Art of Romance" is surely the best album of its kind, by any MALE singer, in recent decades. Coincidentally (or maybe not) it's the best such recording for Tony since his classic "Movie Song Album" of 40 years ago -- whose "musical director" was . . . Mandel: Johnny conducted nine of the Movie theme songs, including two he'd recently written (songs superbly covered at the time by Frank Sinatra -- "Emily" and "The Shadow of Your Smile").-----Johnny Mandel wrote three of the first four tracks selected by Tony to set the tone for this amazing program : Track one is the hauntingly beautiful "Close Enough for Love" (lyric by Paul Williams) followed by "Where Do You Start" (one my favorites - co-written with "The Bergmans" -- Marilyn and Alan) plus "Little Did I Dream" (a seldom-heard gem, that Johnny co-wrote with David Frishberg).-----Frank Sinatra never got around to recording what many of us consider Johnny Mercer's best song: "I Remember You." But when you hear Tony's `take' on this song (which other song-writers have nominated as the best, popular song lyric ever written) especially as it's heard here, with Mandel's evocative, `celestial' string arrangement - it's hard to imagine a better recording of the song Johnny Mercer himself considered his personal favorite lyrical `child.'-----Author Truman Capote wrote some ravishingly beautiful song lyrics - but none finer than his words for Harold Arlen's "Don't Like Good-byes." Prediction: If you live to be 100, you'll never hear a finer rendition of this song! The `take-your-breath-away' beauty of the arrangement (by Jorge Calandrelli) is so fresh in its conception - cleverly holding back the song's (seldom-heard) opening verse --until almost the very end; something Sinatra himself did to brilliant effect . . . most notably on HIS lone album with . . . Johnny Mandel 46 years ago!By the time Sinatra turned 80, `The Voice' had lost much of its power. Not so Tony Bennett - whose vocal instrument, incredibly, has NEVER sounded more powerful than here and now -- on "The Art of Romance." Just listen to the supple strength of Tony's ageless voice on what MAY be this album's greatest melody -- from composer Harold Arlen . . . with those lyrically perfect words from Truman Capote:"Have I found the answer?Yes! She's the only answerGuess I won't have to guide her . . .Just walk beside her . . .Can't you see it clearlyThat I love her dearly?Found the girl to lean upon . . .And if I could arrange itOh would I care to change it?Not me!