Bruce Ratner? The Real Estate mogul, minority owner of the Nets and man responsible for building the Barclay Center a stones throw away from the Marcy Houses in Bedford-Stuyvesant, thereby giving new meaning to the word gentrification was honored at the City Parks Foundation gala at Summerstage In Central Park. On Tuesday night he spoke of how the nascent Summerstage, originally run by the city, was ready to be closed down until the non profit City Parks Foundation bought the rights for a buck, raised a million bucks, and have been in the black ever since.
The story tells us two things: 1) the right private enterprise can be very effective in public works and 2) New Yorkers love free music! Though Tuesdays concert, produced by City Winery, was a fund raiser and the folks sitting in front of me had paid $25,000 in some cases for the privilege of being there, while the less well heeled fans coughed up $100 for the sold out show, all concerned got their monies worth.
I have not proven a fan of the City Winery’s tribute concerts whereby a dozen or so musicians play songs from the catalog of a major performer. Last year’s Prince tribute at Carnegie Hall was abysmal and the previous year’s Rolling Stone concert at the same venue was only marginally better. I had missed the Jimi Hendrix tribute in between and it was with some trepidation that I noted names on the program. Suzanne Vega? Ted Leo? Interesting without being particularly inspiring. Do you mess with the classics? Do you play the classics? Yes, I knew we were safe with Bucky’s kid, the guitarist and bandleader John Pizzarelli, but after him? Who knows where the road will leads us…
Well, that was a fruitless concern. John was the master of ceremonies and his band were on stage all night long. So the next concern were the songs and this was a little more difficult. While it is true Sinatra covered “Send In The Clowns” on Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back, it isn’t a Sinatra song and neither is “Moon River”. It is not merely that I would like to have heard “Summer Wind” or “I’ve Got The World On A String”, it is that some of these songs are so indelibly Sinatra in ways that “Nature Boy” certainly is not.
Still, a lot of ground is covered and some of these performances should have a second life on record. Bettye Lavette needs to record her “My Way”. I mean now.
Marc Cohn isn’t know to swing, but swing he does to open the show with a faithful “Fly Me To The Moon” (B+) followed by an equally faithful “Moon River” which, despite his “not best known by Sinatra” caveat, performs the Henry Mancini classic (docked a notch for irrelevance: B) .
And another folkie, Suzanne Vega known for “Luka” not “Mack The Knife” and again, while I admire her performance and who doesn’t admire the Weill and Brecht masterpiece made famous by Bobby Darin, why is it here (B-)? “How Insensitive” -from Sinatra’s work with the Spanish master Antônio Carlos Jobim, was a great choice and beautifully perform (A).
What if Joan Osborne was one of us? She would undercut her powerful voice blues bellow and play it straight with a terrific “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” (B+) and an important “Something Stupid” with Marc Cohn. Important? Yes, because Sinatra couldn’t give into the sexiness of the track because he was singing it with his daughter. Joan, who looks terrific, is flirty and Cohn seems dazzled (A)
The John Picarelli Seven (yes, he knows there is 8 of them) take center stage for an epic “Ring A Ding Ding” (A) and “You Make Me Feel So Young (A-) both songs swing and the band is allowed to stretch out for the first time all night and take advantage of it. John asks us to sing along to only one word: individual, and we blow it of course! Is there anything more thrilling then a great jazz orchestra enjoying themselves? PS: that’s Bucky’s other son Martin on stand up bass.
I saw Allen Touissant earlier this year opening for Dr. John. I thought he was great as well and see no reason to change my mind. The spiritual “The Long Road” (B+) from Sinatra’s Capitol years was smashing and I am sure we all shared John’s professed excitement at watching the two share a stage. “All The Way” (B) was lovely as well but Allen was too self effacing. He stayed hidden behind his piano and then was gone before we knew it.
Mary Chapin Carpenter performed one of the evening’s highlights. “Nice ‘N’ Easy” (A) is exactly the sort of song that should be performed at a celebration of Sinatra. Unfortunately “In The Wee Small Hours Of Morning” (B-) was a hard sell in this environment
I am not certain if Summerstage simply screwed up with Aimee Mann and Ted Leo (Andrew Bird would play a solo, but was used to much better effect a little later) because I would have loved to hear Aimee sing a full blown ballad and instead got a jazzy swinger “Just One Of Those Things” (B). And only one song. Perhaps Erica can get the great Mann for a full show next year.
Loudon Wainwright III used his jokey hard edge humor to sell “The Lady A Tramp” (B) pretty well and his timing is immaculate but Loudon riffing on how Sinatra sang with a cigarette in his hand and then failing to show us what he did was silly and got in the way of “One For My Baby (And One More For The Road) (C+). A song impossible to listen to after Mary Tyler Moore’s brilliant lampoon on her old TV sitcom.
Andrew Bird made up for the Aimee song with a lovely whistling, fiddling “I Fall In Love Too Easily” (A-), played so perfectly it seemed to take the evening into the realm of high art (from the low culture where jazz lives) but again, Nat King Cole owns “Nature Boy”, don’t try and palm it off as a Sinatra song even if he has sung it in the past. If that’s the criteria, why not play “Something”?
Sure, it isn’t really a Sinatra song, it is actually much more a Judy Collins song, but if the great Dame wants to play “Send In The Clowns” (B+) who are you to tell her no. I dare you. I double dare you. That crystalline voice still sounds so immaculate and moving.
Bettye Lavette’s “Come Rain Or Come Shine” (B) was good enough but her “My Way” (A+) was the only serious reinterpretation of a Sinatra song I heard Tuesday night . It was a masterful rethinking, a sermon to self awareness, an emphatic self-appraisal, taken slow, soulful, almost spoke sung. Like speaking in tune. Easily the best song of the night, this is the second great reworking of “My Way” (Sid Vicious killed a cat) and it stands as a testament to Lavette’s greatness that in this setting she should could make such a song sound brand new again.
Summerstage Artistic Director Erika Elliott booked John Legend at SOBs before he hit it big and so I am sure she was especially excited to have the great soul singer perform Tuesday night. But I wasn’t. I had seen Legend some ten years ago and found him Alicia Keys type dull. Well, I don’t anymore. Legend provided the one thing the evening was missing: a substitute for Sinatra’s chill, his ring-a-ding-ding sexiness. Legend was Sam Cooke cool. He exuded Fred Astaire class. With star appeal and smarts (he was the only singer to acknowledge the photographers in the mosh pit) , he played “A Very Good Year” (A-), “My Funny Valentine” (B+) and “The Way You Look Tonight” (A). The latter as suave and smooth a performance as you’ll ever see. Brimming with self-confidence, Legend brought down the house.
Finally, everybody clambered on on stage for a rousing “New York New York” (B-), a song I hope to never hear again in this lifetime. But still, it had to be done.
So, a wonderful evening, more than worth the time and a vindication for City Winery to my mind. However, Betty Lavette brought it to a level of artistry you don’t see every day. I couldn’t find her performance on YouTube but if it shows I will definitely post it. A real achievement by all.
Grade: A-