Jazz musicians covering pop songs is nothing new, but after years of refining his craft, Will Strickler brings a new edge to the genre. Think less “Jazz version of Disney songs” and more “what if A Whole New World was the theme song for Aladdin as he emerges from an underground bunker to post apocalyptic desert wasteland?”
Will has no nostalgia for life in past decades; audiences who want good ol’ jazz music and none of the rap that kids listen to these days should avoid coming to hear Will’s music, which includes a mash-up of Billy Staryhorn/Duke Ellington’s “Chelsea Bridge” with the hook of Ludacris’s “What’s Your Fantasy.”
“Fotografia de uma Fotoagrafia”, a combination of the melody of Nickelback’s “Photograph” with chords of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s bossa nova tune also titled “Photograph” may elicit amusement on first listen, but as the melody lingers in your head days later, you start questioning how much difference there is in the dreams and desires of people in Canada and Brazil.
