It’s easy to disguise musical shortcomings by piling on bells and whistles (both vocal and instrumental). Simplicity, however, is much harder to pull off—which is why Sunday in New York is such a minor triumph. Basically all it has is a singer (Christine Ebersole) and a pianist (Billy Stritch, who contributes quite a bit of vocals as well) backed by a rhythm section; the performances are unadorned; the songs mix well-known classics and more obscure tunes in a classic mode, and the arrangements aren’t radical either. But what fun it all is! It’s as if we had been beamed to a 1950s nightclub. The quartet displays an innate sense of swing (check out the thrilling, fingersnapping "Hit That Jive, Jack") and easily rides a samba-ish beat ("Walking in New York"). Even chestnuts such as "My Favorite Things", in a particularly fleet-footed version, and "I Only Have Eyes for You/Lullaby of Broadway" come across as fresh. The album ends with "Will You?," from Grey Gardens (a show for which Ebersole won a Tony), and while, on paper, the song looks as if it may have been out of place, the result never feels less than organic. -- Elisabeth Vincentelli