[Dixielandjazz] Rebecca Kilgore and "The Jazzy Side of Judy Garland"

[Stephen G Barbone]

If you are anywhere near NYC, this lady is a must see/hear.


Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

Channeling Judy Garland, Serenely


by Stephen Holden - NY Times - August 2 2012

It’s difficult to imagine two more disparate sensibilities than the singer Rebecca Kilgore  and the subject of her new show, “The Jazzy Side of Judy Garland,” now playing at Feinstein’s at Loews Regency. Ms. Kilgore, who is based in Portland, Ore., has an invariably light touch. Wearing a half-smile of pure enjoyment, she sails from one number to the next like a butterfly in a field of flowers.

Garland, as we know, had little of the serenity that seems hard-wired into Ms. Kilgore. In Garland’s hands a sad song took on a tragic edge; a joyful one became a manic romp. Everything she sang was infused with breathless urgency and excitement. Ms. Kilgore’s steadiness is the default position through which ripples of exhilaration emerge. When she is singing with Harry Allen, the tenor saxophonist who leads her quartet, they convey the pleasure of longtime friends at peace with the world doing what they love most.

At Tuesday’s opening night show Ms. Kilgore found her way into the essence of Garland signature hits like “The Boy Next Door,” “The Trolley Song” and “The Man That Got Away,” delicately inserting hints of Garland’s theatricality like pinches of spice. Although Ms. Kilgore is 63, she found enough of the wide-eyed girl played by Garland in “Meet Me in St. Louis” to evoke a mature woman affectionately looking back on her naïve younger self.

Stripped of melodrama and its pace quickened, her minimalist “Man That Got Away” changed from a cry of anguish into a wistful remembrance of enduring some emotional hard knocks. It came from a place of safety. “Friendly Star,” from the 1950 movie “Summer Stock,” was translated into a bossa nova in which her excellent quartet, whose other three members include Rossano Sportiello on piano, Joel Forbes on bass and Chuck Riggs on drums, injected quotations from Jobim’s “Waters of March.”

The show’s most euphoric moment was a double-barreled fusion of Peggy Lee’s “I Like Men” (a famous Garland-Lee television show duet) and a scorching “I’m Just Wild About Harry” in which Mr. Allen’s playing more than justified the song’s title.

Rebecca Kilgore performs through Aug. 11 at Feinstein’s at Loews Regency, 540 Park Avenue, at 61st Street; (212) 339-4095, feinsteinsattheregency.com.