The contents of Souvenirs come from recordings that Martin made over the period of 1995 to 1999. Now Martin has been in the business longer than four years but since his early hits like Say That You Love Me and Be My Lady were made under another label, this compilation is the closest we can come to getting a retrospective album.
Souvenirs is also not what I would call a greatest hits collection. Not every cut here is a seller since Martin opted to showcase not just the hits but also songs that represent milestones in his life and his personal favorites. This decision will of course definitely disappoint those already familiar with the repertoire included in Journeys or Roads or the Forever series. But since it is impossible to get all of those beautiful songs together in one album, what Souvenirs has will have to suffice for the moment. At this point, a boxed set of Martin’s albums sounds like an excellent idea. With something like that, there is no chance of missing out on anybody’s favorites.
But hits or not, new or old, each song he does gets the total Martin Nievera treatment. And that means baring his very soul in every line through that wonderful voice. Despite years of watching him and listening to his songs, I still marvel at the prodigious amount of emotion and energy that he pours into every song. And you can bet that there is a surfeit of those in this new album.
There are old favorites like You, You’re My Everything, The Greatest Love of All and The Promise. There are Filipino compositions like Ikaw Lang ang Mamahalin written by Louie Ocampo and Joey Albert and Martin originals like Never Said Goodbye, plus You Are My Song, Promise of Love, To Say Goodbye and I’ll be There for You all collaborations with Louie Ocampo. A few duets like The Greatest Love Affair with his also great-sounding father Bert Nievera, The Last Time I Felt Like This with his twin sister Vicki Nievera-Davis, Forever with Regine Velasquez and It’s All Up to You with Mikaila. To close the album, there is the new song Pag-uwi by Ocampo and Joey Ayala, which won the grand prize in the 2001 Metropop Song Festival.
For better listening, all of the songs included in Souvenirs have been transferred thru the 44.1 khz 24 bit digital transfer to obtain a uniformly defined sound. So Martin comes out sounding even better than usual. This is the first album ever to use this system. Souvenirs also comes with a free VCD containing music videos of six of the songs in the album.
Talk about great recordings: Nearness of You, The Ballad Book is a great all-star production in every sense of the word. Sax artist Michael Brecker leads the line-up. Pat Metheny is producer. Of course he also plays the guitars. Herbie Hancock is on the piano. Charlie Haden plays bass. Jack Dejohnette is on the drums. And also around to sing the two cuts in the album is James Taylor. Not only that, Gil Evans joined in the fun to arrange a song.
The Ballad Book is the latest from the Grammy winning Brecker, one of the top jazz instrumentalists. Followers often liken him to the great John Coltrane and truth to tell his innovative style and flair for the unexpected stands up to the comparison. This is his seventh solo album and it is indeed a major event considering the wealth of talent he has brought together and the variety of materials this brilliant group of performers have chosen to do.
These ballads range from Irving Berlin’s Always to Kurt Weill’s My Ship, Hoagy Carmichael’s The Nearness of You, Venturini’s Nascente and James Taylor’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight. Then there are the originals by Hancock, Chan’s Song by Metheny, Sometimes I See and Seven Days and by Brecker himself, the beautiful Incandescence, which Coltrane would have loved to play.