Editor's note: Vocalist Patti Austin performed at last month's Return to Romance music festival.

"AVANT GERSHWIN" BY PATTI AUSTIN; RENDEZVOUS

As Patti Austin filigrees her smooth, trumpet-like vocals onto these big-band arrangements of George and Ira Gershwin classics, she becomes the lead instrument in a lush, lively sound.

The high-energy music-making arises from intellectual inquiry, resulting in an album's worth of fresh perspectives on music that has been memorably interpreted by three-quarters of a century of jazz, pop and cabaret performers.

Recording-studio pristine — though it was largely recorded live with the WDR Big Band of Cologne, Germany — the album luxuriates in eight single-song excursions and medleys, most lasting six minutes or more.

The knockout statement is made in a nearly 17-minute medley of songs from "Porgy and Bess," many snatched from the mouths of the show's male characters. The soft, reassuring caress of "A Woman Is a Sometime Thing" suggests the exact opposite of the title. Bursts of irrepressible energy erupt between the slow, sustained verses of "It Ain't Necessarily So," expanding into a cavorting, carefree "I Got Plenty o' Nothin'."

The 12-minute opening medley is a compendium of complementary and contrasting colors, displaying the many sounds of which Austin and the band are capable as they romp through "Fascinatin' Rhythm," "Slap That Bass," "Clap Yo' Hands" and "Strike Up the Band."