(FORTUNE Magazine) – Dawn Upshaw Dawn Upshaw Sings Vernon Duke Nonesuch

Opera singers trying American pop are usually as successful as Al Gore doing the boogaloo, and nearly as embarrassing. Even so magnificent a singer as the Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel trips over his uvula on his new Rodgers and Hammerstein disk, Something Wonderful, which is actually something God-awful.

But then there's Dawn Upshaw Sings Vernon Duke, in which the summery sheen of her soprano makes the perfect connection with--and between--"April in Paris" and "Autumn in New York." These are probably the best known of Duke's songs, and Upshaw sings them exquisitely. But the real joys on this disk inhabit lesser-known numbers like "Water Under the Bridge" and "Words Without Music," both of them direct descendants of the classical pieces Duke wrote before his friend George Gershwin persuaded him he'd never make it with the name Vladimir Dukelsky.

Does it mean that Upshaw sings these songs so well because she and Duke share concert-hall roots? Not nearly. Just listen to her on 1996's Dawn Upshaw Sings Rodgers and Hart, or the previous year's I Wish It So (both, like the new disk, on Nonesuch). And she can probably boogaloo too.

--Daniel Okrent