ISN'T IT RICH?

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

Broadway. the very word conjures up familiar images-descending helicopters, ascending cats, lines of embarrassingly exuberant dancers kicking up their legs and belting out endless choruses of catchy ditties. The word jazz evokes an aesthetic of a different sort-two-drink minimums, low-key cool, wandering saxophone solos that trail off into ecstasy. The new album Color and Light: Jazz Sketches on Sondheim brings the worlds of jazz and Broadway together, and the result is a sensuous, satisfying collection of songs. These interpretations are more intelligent and textured than the average Broadway show tune, yet they contain more melodiousness and amiability than one usually expects from jazz.

Stephen Sondheim is among Broadway's best and most daring songwriters (A Little Night Music, Sunday in the Park with George), but his cerebral, challenging compositions possess depths that cannot always be fully explored in the sometimes constraining format of musical theater. Those depths are plumbed here. Each track on Color and Light features one or more jazz musicians performing a Sondheim show tune. Singer Peabo Bryson and saxophonist Joshua Redman join forces on a version of Sondheim's Pretty Women (from the musical Sweeney Todd) that is mature and mysterious, dark and sweet. Grover Washington Jr., with charismatic sax runs, turns the understated melody of Every Day a Little Death (from A Little Night Music) into something direct and forceful. And Bryson and vocalist Nancy Wilson transform Loving You (from Passion) into a soul-bearing vocal duet that haunts and enchants. Show tunes have rarely sounded so rich, so smart and so good.