Isn't It Romantic?: SATB Choral Octavo

Steve Zegree's arrangement captures the romantic warmth of this standard while keeping the harmonic sophistication that makes Hart and Rodgers' writing so rewarding for singers. The voicing sits beautifully across four parts without sacrificing the jazz-inflected chords that give the song its elegance, making it accessible for solid high school choirs without dumbing down the material.

Urbane and intimate, this arrangement invites the listener into a moment of genuine affection expressed with wit and restraint. The harmonic palette moves beyond the obvious, creating small surprises that reward careful listening while maintaining the song's essential elegance.

Choirs with strong blend and intonation skills who want to explore the American songbook with artistic substance. This arrangement works especially well for concert programs where you want to include a recognizable standard without treating it superficially.

• Balance the lyrical warmth against the chromatic harmony by keeping vibrato controlled and supported; let the chord movement speak rather than oversinging individual phrases.
• Shape the melody line with the natural speech inflections Hart intended; avoid forcing strict metric regularity that would flatten the conversational quality of the text.
• Listen carefully to voice leading in the inner parts, particularly where the jazz voicings create passing harmonies; these lines deserve as much care as the soprano line.
• Use the rubato inherent in the harmonic progression to breathe naturally between phrases rather than holding to strict tempo throughout.

Include this in a pops or standards concert to anchor a set of American songbook treasures, or program it in a concert of vocal jazz arrangements where its sophistication complements other contemporary treatments of classic material. At twelve pages, it's substantial enough to deserve its own moment rather than fill a single slot.

• Singing jazz harmonies and chromatic voice leading
• Shaping lyrical phrases with conversational text delivery
• Balancing melody and inner harmony in close voicing
• Interpreting rubato and flexible phrasing in a standards context