On The Way They Make Me Feel, Kansas City singer Angela Hagenbach puts her vocal burnish on the songs of legendary composers Michel Legrand, Johnny Mandel and the late Henry Mancini. Hagenbach's dark, sultry voice is perfect for this material, 11 songs drenched in a romantic vibe with touches of 1960s-styled nightclub jazz, dappled with Hagenbach's trademark Brazilian flourishes. The Mancini tracks sizzle the most. The love poem "Slow Hot Wind," like its title, is a sublimely simmering and smoky breeze of a tune with Hagenbach showing some amazing vocal theatrics, scatting, crooning, moaning and even sounding amazingly like a trumpet at one point. "Charade," another Mancini creation, is a toe-tapping shuffle that takes the listener back to a time when jazz was club music, with guitarist Larry Koonse doing his best Kenny Burrell. Hagenbach has been a Kansas City-area jazz staple for most of her stellar career. The Way They Make Me Feel shows that she is an artist still perfecting her craft on the way up.
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