Music for Music: Wise Men I

Maria Elena Silva

Wise Men Never Try, Volume I

An Album of Standards from the “Wise Men Never Try” Series

By Dan Ursini ©2025

The scope of Maria Elena Silva’s capacity for original thinking is prodigious. When her 2023 album, Dulce, came out, I wrote that it was filled with “art songs the likes of which I have never heard before.” While her previous albums highlighted her original cutting edge compositions, she has released two new albums from a planned series devoted to covers, entitled “Wise Men Never Try.” Each cuts its own deep edge.  Reflecting the remarkable sweep of Silva’s interests, one is an album of standards from the Great American Songbook. The other album is a collection of songs from the American Civil War. In addition, Silva is releasing a few singles that are largely Bob Dylan covers. She creates for all of them mystifying and powerful arrangements supporting  her highly sensitive and nuanced vocals.  This particular column focuses on the standards album.

Discussing her decision to do ten compositions from the Great American Songbook. Silva remarked, “I always planned on doing a standards series, when the time was right.” She explained her approach: “I chose pieces that I felt had very strong melodies. The idea was to keep the melody intact but loosen the harmony. It was important to have musicians who still knew the traditional harmony for the piece but were willing to put some distance there to allow the lyrics and melody to hover above the “chord.”

The small band Silva created for this project includes the piano of Erez Dessel; the double bass of Tyler Wagner; and the electric guitar of Ben MacDonald; with Silva herself on vocals and acoustic guitars. She observed, “The gentlemen that I worked with on these recordings are well-versed in my original material and style.”

Silva’s arrangements comprise a fresh and honest reinvention of the essential truth and elegance of the compositions on the album. Yet, in doing so, she often brings to the surface difficult truths implicit in the songs, which radically alter our understanding of them. Exemplifying this is “Walk A Little Faster.” Pianist Dessel’s intro employs a few perfectly chosen dissonant clusters that set an ominous tone. They draw power from the unnerving silences punctuating them.  Silva sings in a quiet soulful voice, determined to tell the truth about the psychic desolation that results from deep denial.

Indeed, a remarkable accomplishment of this album is the way it broadens the scope of interpretation of these standards—especially those which move away from celebration. Silva’s intense rendition of “The Night We Called It a Day,” reveals a melody suffused with beautiful sadness and longing.

A prayerful desperation underpins her performance of “All of Me.”

Another surprising strength of this album is its inspired use of resonant silences. Silva remarked, “I want to really respect the music and let it show itself by creating a lot of space in these pieces. Tyler and Erez are amazing—they really lean into the quiet and let harmonic shapes form slowly.”

The standards chosen for this album deal with either the aftermath of a concluded romance (“The Night We Called It a Day”) or the softly lit entrance of another (“Some Enchanted Evening”). They are about those intermission moments, if you will, offering the mind a chance to pull back and delicately consider what just happened—or what might yet happen. Each is presented in an ambience of abundant quiet. Tempos are fully relaxed; the focus is on melodies with considerable emotional and spiritual power. Silva’s fully and sweetly invested vocal on “You Don’t Know How Glad I Am” allows the darting lyricism of the melody to become refreshingly transparent.

On “This Is Always,” her nuanced vocal is enhanced by a ruminative double-bass solo by Wagner which displays his robust tone.

MacDonald’s adroit guitar provides a ghostly presence behind Silva’s dreamy and intimate, “I’m In Love Again.”

The album’s closer, “Some Enchanted Evening,” is a particular favorite. Silva sings with preternatural tender grace, while Dessel’s piano and Wagner’s double bass provide delicate, empathetic support.

Through this album, Silva sets a provocative and absorbing new direction for her music. The next couple columns examine how she develops it through her album of civil war songs and her singles covering Bob Dylan.

Please note: A version of this article in altered form comprises the liner notes of this album.

Dan Ursini and his wife Valerie live in Oak Park, Illinois. Over the years he has done many kinds of writing. Ursini served as the first resident playwright for the Steppenwolf Theatre of Chicago (1978-1983); he worked for ten years as a Contributing Editor for Puerto Del Sol magazine; he wrote performance art pieces presented at such Chicago venues as Club Lower Links and Club Dreamerz. Ursini wrote radio theatre presented on NPR in the early 1990s. Throughout all this, he has worked full-time at the Law Library at DePaul University where for a decade he also wrote articles for Dialogue, the DePaul law school’s alumni publication. A particular highlight was his role as a researcher for a documentary, Race to Execution, about the connection between race and capital punishment in the U.S.A. In 2007 it was broadcast on the PBS series, Independent Lens. Apart from all this, Ursini was active for some years as a bass guitarist in various Chicago blues/gospel/funk/lounge configurations. Currently Ursini is working on his latest novel. Dan can be reached at: danursini@aol.com

Maria Elena Silva: Dulce at EIL

Maria Elena Silva: Wise Men Never Try, Volume I: Great American Songbook Standards at Bandcamp