Gerrie van der Klei – Lovers & Friends

Singer Gerrie van der Klei could have written her memoirs, but chose to make an album. What a joy. For ‘Lovers & Friends’ gives a better picture of life than hundred pages could. Love and love lost, happiness that becomes memory, life that seems to rhyme but just doesn’t.
The actress-singer-musicalstar sings that lifestory in ballads, with ‘Scotch and soda’ – playing herself the ukulele from her youth – as a musical smile in between. Topnotch songs from the international repertory, with a caressing delivery that touches the heart of them. Moving in the way she makes words and music completely her own: ‘In the wee small hours’, Lennonn & McCarthy’s ‘In my life’ – which marked her television debut in 1967 – ‘The best of times’, dedicated to her great love, big band leader and physician Boy Edgar (deceased 1980), a Sinatra-song like ‘Empty tables’, Strayhorns ‘Lush life’.
Gerrie van der Klei is accompanied by topmusicians from the Dutch jazz scene with a superior feeling for the ‘whats’ and ‘wheres’ in a song, ideally contributing to this warm and poignant life in music.