I'm a man who makes lists.
Like garden supplies, exotic spices, memorable songs deleted from MGM
musicals, birthdays to remember, recipes for 36 different kinds of meat
loaf, discontinued colognes, favorite scenes in Audrey Hepburn movies.
You get the picture. Now that I have heard the extraordinary CD you
are holding in your hand, I am, for reasons that will soon become obvious,
adding Christine Andreas to my list of all-time favorite girl singers.
In this tired old world of
psych-out, burn-out and sell-out, she brings sanity and order to confusion
and anxiety, with a voice as regal and pure as an angel's. Already an
accomplished star of the Broadway musical stage, where she sent critics
gushing to their thesauruses searching for what Johnny Mercer called
"brand-new phrases to sing your praises" in hit shows like My Fair Lady
and The Scarlet Pimpernel, she now proves to be equally at home on
concert stages, at the White House, or in the more relaxed setting of smart
New York hotel supper clubs like the swanky Cafe Carlyle and the Algonquin's
historic Oak Room. No matter what she sings or where she sings it, she
does it with wit, grace, artistry and style. It doesn't hurt a bit
that, in the looks department, she is also pretty darn swellegant.
Distilling every component in
her vast armory of skills into a fascinating elixir of songs both new and
familiar, the meticulous repertoire selected for the program on this album
reflects the special brand of alchemy that bewitched audiences during her
most recent engagement at the Carlyle. She doesn't play safe. On
the opening bars of What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life, she
hits the ground running. Passion rises fast, balance is sustained, and
the sensitive ballad by Michel LeGrant and Alan and Marilyn Bergman, first
introduced in a great but largely forgotten Jean Simmons movie called The
Happy Ending, takes on a pensive new longing. With Autumn in New
York, Vernon Duke's classic valentine to the city that never rests, she
affirms the world's enduring love affair with the Big Apple, polishing a
famous gem with a spin of her own. Neither the song nor the seasonal
sign of renewal it signifies has ever seemed more relevant or inspiring than
it does in the shadow of recent events. Christine's glistening,
star-spangled pride shines through the clouds in those "canyons of
steel" like a ray of restorative sunshine.
What if We Went to Italy
is a new song by Mary Chapin Carpenter that demonstrates her knack for
detective work -- seeking out and introducing contemporary works that are
fresh and meaningful and just a little bit different. Richard Rodgers
and Lorenz Hart might not recognize It's Got To Be Love, one of the
brighter songs from the score of On Your Toes, but I'm willing to bet
they'd be knocked right out of their argyle socks to hear it turned upside
down by that rarest form of musical wunderkind -- a soprano who
swings! The dark purple stain she leaves on Duke Ellington's haunting In
a Sentimental Mood is engraved on the heart with indelible ink.
This hard-to-sing soliloquy, with its rangy detours and dissonant half-notes
is, for most singers, like a climb up Mt. Everest. Many have tried to
scale its peaks, few have triumphed. Christine negotiates the
challenges effortlessly, chilling the spine on the top notes and warming the
soul in the depths below Middle C. Her charming vibrato on the ends of
vowels has the power to thrill, and the way she flats that final note would
be the envy of the savviest jazz diva. Miraculously, she manages to
sound sad and sexy at the same time.
Show Me is one of the
Lerner and Loewe showstoppers Christine performed nightly in the Broadway
revival of My Fair Lady, jazzed up in a gingersnappy new
arrangement. Alfie is, of course, the Burt Bacharach - Hal
David theme song from the Michael Caine movie of the same name. With
creamy jazz chords by ace pianist-arranger Lee Musiker and a complement of
lush strings providing a hammock for Christine's plaintive voice to swing
in, a song I thought I never wanted to hear again gets an astonishing
face-lift, like an old gray room refurbished in lollipop-red taffeta.
Though classically trained, it's
easy to see why Christine numbers among her early musical influences many of
the great interpreters of popular music, show tunes and jazz. Lena
Horne, Elle Fitzgerald and Judy Garland are high on her list. And what
singer born in New Jersey, regardless of gender, hasn't been shaped by
Francis Albert Sinatra? One of the most interesting things on this
collection is the way Christine combines two staples in the Sinatra songbook
to examine the pain and loss of love unrequited. Antonio Carlos
Jobim's How Insensitive, without its usual tropical glibness, becomes
a perfect lead-in for the lonely midnight mood on I'm a Fool to Want You,
providing what Christine describes as a "provocative dual
scenario." The lyrics, some of which were written by Sinatra
himself during his tempestuous marriage to Ava Gardener, still relate to
anyone with specific memories of an affair that ended unhappily but forgot
to fade away. These are songs of emotional despair, achingly filtered
through a haze of loneliness, and Christine informs them with a romantic
resignation that is downright palpable. Yes, baby, sometimes the blues
hit you when you can't hit back.
Before she calls time out to
rest her formidable chops, she snaps back into full-throttle action, leaving
the Sheldon Harnick - Jerry Bock title song from (S)he Loves Me in a
rhapsodic state of suspended animation. The versatility and
craftsmanship that have made her such a fine actress turn At the Ballet,
an award-winning centerpiece from A Chorus Line, into a three-act
play in which Marvin Hamlisch's music and Ed Kleban's introspective lyrics
are movingly served. But before the final curtain falls, there's one
more surprise up her unraveled sleeve: a gorgeous, self-searching Dave
Frishberg song called Listen Here. Written for a Mary Tyler
Moore television special but rarely performed since, the song is not only
rescued from oblivion but turned, in the process, into something that might
well be Christine's own survival philosophy: find that inner self that nags
you with anxiety and doubt, and give it to the raspberry! Clever girl
that she is, Christine Andreas closes with the musical suggestion that a
silver lining of renewed hope and confidence can still break through the
stormiest horizon if you're wise enough to know one when you see one.
The cumulative effect of so much
artistry, talent and good taste is a collection of songs that shatter the
senses and fire the spirit with a force that takes the breath away and a joy
that is delightfully contagious. Play this music, and learn
something. If you have only experienced the magic of Christine Andreas
on the musical stage, hearing her in a new and intimate setting is going to
be a brand new treat. If you're a virgin and this is your very first
time, then how I wish I were in your shoes. Either way, you are in for
something. In a world of overrated girls singers who woefully mistake
cacophony for talent, she's the real deal -- no phony vocal calisthenics, no
showoff pyrotechnics, just pure, undiluted enchantment.
