[Dixielandjazz] Michael Feinstein & Barbara Cook

[Stephen G Barbone]

If you are in NYC for the holidays, like The Great American Songbook,  
enjoy the Cabaret scene and have a few extra bucks (the joint is  
expensive), by all means see this show. The performers are superb and  
the venue is a classic example of high end  musical scene that was all  
the rage in NYC during the 1950s.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

Benevolent Monarchs Of the Songbook Realm

By STEPHEN HOLDEN - NY TIMES - Dec 1 2011


To watch Michael Feinstein and Barbara Cook share musical lore onstage  
is the next best thing to attending a master class on how to sing  
popular standards. Ms. Cook, who actually conducts master classes on  
“living” inside a song while singing it, never hits a false emotional  
note. And Mr. Feinstein is the ultimate singing professor, whose  
perfect pitch coincides with a photographic memory for lyrics. Woe to  
the performer who takes liberties with words that he views almost as  
sacred texts.

Their coming together on Wednesday evening at Feinstein’s at Loews  
Regency suggested a meeting of benign musical monarchs swapping  
stories about the American songbook’s golden years. Ms. Cook named  
Irving Berlin and Stephen Sondheim as her favorite songwriters, and  
both cited Mabel Mercer as a critical stylistic inspiration. They were  
ably served by a quintet led by the pianist Mike Renzi.

Ms. Cook, who will receive a Kennedy Center Honors medal on Saturday,  
turned 84 in October. She is an object lesson in how to compensate for  
diminishing vocal resources by digging even deeper into the song  
lyrics. “I Got Lost in His Arms” revolved around the phrase, “Look  
what I found,” delivered in a tone of emphatic defiance. “Love Is Good  
for Anything That Ails You” swung vigorously. “Here’s to Life,” her  
latter-day signature song, was steeped in the weary knowledge that, at  
a certain point, its advice to “give it all you got,” isn’t so easily  
followed.

Mr. Feinstein made a courtly and generous squire as he helped Ms. Cook  
to the stage while singing “Beautiful Girls,” from “Follies.” Their  
voices blended handsomely in several duets sung facing each other. Mr.  
Feinstein can usually be counted on to come up with a coup, and on  
Wednesday he had a doozy in a rewritten version of “Fifty Percent,”  
the showstopper from the 1978 Broadway musical “Ballroom.”

With a few tweaks by its lyricists, Alan and Marilyn Bergman, it  
became a fiercely proud declaration of loyalty by the boyfriend of a  
married man.

As he belted out the words, “I’d rather have 50 percent of him or any  
percent of him, than all of anybody else at all,” the nostalgic show  
was electrified with a moment of high drama.

The show runs through Dec. 30 at Feinstein’s at Loews Regency, 540  
Park Avenue, at 61st Street; (212) 339-4095, feinsteinsattheregency.com.