The Best Restaurant Music Ever Made

Each piece of background music for a restaurant ought to be chosen with as much care as each ingredient for the day’s specials. They may have equal effects on guests. To this end, the last post posited the dual theories that lyrics should be avoided and no one artist should be given the floor for an entire CD.

To achieve a steady stream of suitable music — background music that resides in the space between mundane and magical — one cannot rely on radio, an online music service or a bartender with a stack of CDs. One has to program every song. But there will be times, unfortunately, when the iPod dock cracks and the cable conks out, when the satellite shifts out of orbit, and you are forced to play CDs from start to finish. These are the ten CDs I’d play (in alphabetical order):


1. Bop Tweed Two
2. Buena Vista Social Club
3. Classical Jazz Quartet Play Rachmoninov
4. David Russell plays Agustín Barrios Mangoré
5. Dexter Gordon: Ballads
6 .Getz/Gilberto (featuring A. C. Jobim)
7. Jacques Loussier Trio — Satie: Gymnopedies & Gnossiennes
8. Miles Davis — Kind of Blue
9. Sphere — Flightpath
10. Undercurrent by Bill Evans and Jim Hall

Here’s why:

1. Bop Tweed Two
You may never have heard of this Connecticut quartet or their blues grooves, but you’d swear otherwise. They create a familiar earthy sound rather than launching virtuosic moonshots. Think Grover Washington Jr. meets Stevie Ray Vaughan in their mellowest of moods.

2. Buena Vista Social Club
Ry Cooder, our international musical archeologist, went to Cuba, rounded up some of their best musicians, put them in a studio, and came out with this classic combination of songs and boleros, folkloric and universal, expressing the sadness of confinement and the wonder of freedom.

3. Classical Jazz Quartet Play Rachmaninov
The secret that music teachers will not tell their students is that Liszt and Handel and the big boys improvised like mad. Rachmaninov would love the Classical Jazz Quartet’s interpretation of his Piano Concerto No. 2. The group converts romantic Russian melodies into blues, ballads, sambas and mid-tempo bop.

4. David Russell plays Agustín Barrios Mangoré
Russell is a gifted guitarist whose lucidity never suppresses passion. Barrios was one of the great composers of the first half of the last century. That he accompanied his brother, Francisco Martin Barrios, during poetry recitals helped make him a master of background music.

5. Dexter Gordon: Ballads
A tall, regal man with a raspy voice and elegant demeanor, Gordon was nominated for an Oscar when he starred in “Round Midnight.” His musical performance is just as authentic, so soothing that you can’t tell where composition ends and vamp begins. His smokey timbre and behind-the-beat phrasing turn every place into an after-hours joint.

6. Getz/Gilberto (featuring Antonio Carlos Jobim)
A half-century has burnished this jewel; every listening creates new tingles, not déjà vu joys. Stan Getz, Astrud Gilberto, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Joao Gilberto are the murderer’s row of bossa nova; they virtually invented the genre and transcended it at the same time. This session glides along like that girl on that beach in Ipanema. When lyrics are sung in Portuguese, they have a forlorn musicality all their own, akin to a Castilian Yiddish purr. All meanings are revealed without understanding a word. (If you crave something newer, check out Céu.)

7. Jacques Loussier Trio — Satie: Gymnopedies & Gnossiennes
As an organist, Bach was extemporaneous and creative, sensing the mood of congregants, swelling with the fervor of a pastor. Like a jazz musician, he regularly improved upon his sheet music. Jacques Loussier made a name playing jazzy Bach variations, but here he energizes Eric Satie in all the right places, and virtually co-writes these haunting tunes.

8. Miles Davis: Kind of Blue
If you don’t know this album, you are lucky. A treasure awaits you. Stop reading and get it. For many years, when albums had two sides, I listened only to side one. I didn’t want to spoil the perfection with a lesser side two. Eventually, I got up the nerve to flip the disc. Side one will play at my funeral, side two in whatever hereafter will have me.

9. Sphere: Flightpath
On the day Thelonious Sphere Monk died (Feb. 17, 1982), this group recorded an album of Monk tunes. Whitney Balliett has called Monk’s compositions “frozen improvisations,” and his improvisations “molten compositions.” Flightpath was Sphere’s second CD. Though it contains only one Monk tune, the maestro’s mark is everywhere, especially in saxophonist Charlie Rouse’s refusal to hurry home. This stuff is as smooth as 40-year-old single-malt Monk.

10. Undercurrent: Bill Evans and Jim Hall
Both Evans on piano and Hall on guitar play sparse, meditative music, inwardly bound ballads, waltzes and downy bop. Neither is trying to entertain you — they entertain themselves and each other, and you just happen to be in the same space at the same time. That takes a lot of pressure off a diner. Enjoy.

Correction | 4:10 p.m. As several commenters have pointed out (thank you), Jobim, Getz, Astrud and Joao Gilberto did not invent samba, they created bossa nova, which is a form of samba, usually softer, slower, and jazzier than mainstream samba, with less percussion and more complex harmonies. The singing is almost a whisper and almost spoken. Antonio Carlos Jobim explained it this way: “Instead of going into history as a branch of samba — which it is — bossa nova is viewed by the world as a branch of jazz.”