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2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 |
| Nancy Gilliland (2009) | |
|---|---|
| Nancy Gilliland's is another in the line of musical careers which began in or near Chicago. She began playing on the family organ tunes she had heard played by her parents ("The first song I played was Caravan"), demonstrating, even though her six-year-old legs were too short to reach the pedals, her natural gift of being able to play a tune after hearing it only once. Soon she was demonstrating organs at the local music store, on the principle that if this young girl can do it, then so can yours. Not so precocious vocally, she didn't add singing to her performances for a couple of decades.
Nancy is now a pianist-vocalist whose repertoire consists of over 1,000 tunes, mostly from the era of the Great American Songbook from the 1920s through 1940s. She regularly demonstrates them--always with the verse (she describes herself as "a verse junkie")--with emotion and sensitivity up and down the San Francisco Peninsula, from the Castro Theatre in San Francisco through The Little Fox in Redwood City to the San Jose Festival, and including a run of almost two decades at one location in Palo Alto. Also in Palo Alto, every week in the early 1990s she sang at the Stanford Theatre with organist Larry Vannucci for audiences which over the years included entertainers such as Ruby Keeler, Alice Faye, Kitty Carlisle and Jack Lemmon, all of whom applauded Nancy's interpretations of music they had made famous. The same goes for composer David Raksin, who enthusiastically joined in Nancy's performance of his classic "Laura"--complete with seldom-heard verse, of course. |
| Pick | Artist | Album | Song | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| # 1 | Frank Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim | Frank Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim | Dindi | (Reprise) |
| # 2 | Dick Hyman | Recital | Odeon | (Reference) |
| # 3 | Fred Hersch | Passion Flower | Lotus Blossom | (Nonesuch) |
| # 4 | Dave Brubeck | Private Brubeck Remembers | For All We Know | (Telarc) |
| # 5 | The Boswell Sisters | The Best of the Boswell Sisters | It's the Girl | (Chestnut) |
| # 6 | Ella Fitzgerald | Like Someone in Love | More Than You Know | (Verve) |
| # 7 | Thomas "Fats" Waller | The Joint Is Jumpin' | Handful of Keys | (Bluebird) |
| # 8 | Bill Henderson | With the Oscar Peterson Trio | All or Nothing at All | (Verve) |
| # 9 | Branford Marsalis | Romances for Saxophones | Emmanuel | (Columbia) |
| # 10 | Blossom Dearie | Jazz Masters 51 | Tea for Two | (Verve) |
| # 11 | Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66 | Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66 | Mas Que Nada | (A&M) |
| # 12 | Scott Hamilton | With Strings | Nancy | (Concord) |
| Book | Ayn Rand, "The Fountainhead" | |||
| Luxury Item | A Bösendorfer concert grand | |||
| Gilad Atzmon
12 Jun Carolyn Brandy 19 Jun Stuart Brinin 16 Oct Ralph Carney 04 Sep India Cooke 20 Feb Ronald Davis 23 Oct Mark Feldman 27 Mar Herb Gibson 06 Mar Nancy Gilliland 29 May | Jon Hendricks
16 Jan Laurence Hobgood 10 Jul Bill Horvitz 13 Nov Nat Johnson 01 May Tom Madden 13 Mar Charlie McCarthy 06 Nov Don Neely 25 Sep Nathan Oliveira 28 Aug Ed Reed 24 Jul | Walter Savage
14 Aug Mike Stern 12 Dec Adam Theis 21 Aug Mads Tolling 17 Apr Hristo Vitchev 22 May Paul van Wageningen 10 Apr Nancy Wright 20 Nov Jim Zimmerman 06 Feb |