Andrea Marcovicci: I'll Be Seeing You...Love Songs of WWII

To see Andrea Marcovicci live in performance is to truly experience the difference between merely a great singer and a great cabaret artist.  Though others may surpass her for vocal quality, there are few who come close to matching her for fully exploring the possibilities in interpreting a melody and lyric.  She alternates singing with melodic speaking, mining each phrase for an unexpected, but perfectly natural inflection.  How many can open a concert with one of the 20th Century's most recognizable songs, Herman Hupfeld's "As Time Goes By", and present it with such immediacy and originality that not only does it seem like you've never really heard it before but you'd swear she's discovering each emotion right at the moment she's singing it.

Though she's known as the Queen of The Algonquin Hotel's Oak Room, Friday night's performance of I'll Be Seeing You…  Love Songs of WWII brought her to the significantly larger Town Hall.  And yet she manages to bring the same personal intimacy to the near 1,500 seat space as she does to the cabaret stage; directing lyrics not only to individuals in the first few rows, but pointing to faces in the upper reaches of the balcony as if to say, "You!  I'm singing this line just for you!"

Any performance by Andrea Marcovicci is not only an entertainment, but also an education in the history of the American Songbook and its significance in our culture.  In introducing her program, which was researched not only through books but also by interviews with people who lived through the era, she explains how hit songs like "Sentimental Journey" and "We'll Meet Again" provided comfort to a nation uncertain of its future during "the most unapologetically sentimental era in our history."  For "the puppies" in the audience, she relates the sublime romance of dancing close to one another with melodies like "Moonlight Serenade" and "Heart and Soul", which is a ravishingly passionate highlight of the evening.  "Once upon a time," she reminds the younger audience members, "your parents… or your grandparents… were hot!"

In introducing her tender and sensual "Speak Low", written by Ogden Nash and Kurt Weill for the Broadway musical One Touch Of Venus ("Two people I can't imagine in the same room together, much less writing a Broadway musical."), she tells how their original choice for the lead, Marlene Dietrich, turned it down, calling the material too sexy and profane.  "So who did they get?  Mary Martin!"

"The Last Time I Saw Paris", "London Pride", "A Nightingale Sang in Barkley Square", "I'll Never Smile Again"…  so many great standards done in their tradition style with arrangements by Glenn Mehrbach and additional arrangements by Tex Arnold, Jonathan Tunick and Shelly Markham (who also conducted the exceptional chamber orchestra) never seem old-fashioned because Marcovicci's informed interpretations draw on the youthful emotions that were bubbling over during that era.

As is traditional with Andrea Marcovicci's concerts, she called out her mother, Helen Stuart, for a solo.  "Dancing With Tears In My Eyes" was sung in a sterling strong low mezzo before they paired for "A Lovely Way to Spend And Evening."

"I told the orchestra I'd be out here working for two hours and then she's going to come out and wipe the floor with me," Marcovicci chuckled before a playfully geeky "You Make Me Feel So Young."

Though I'll Be Seeing You…  Love Songs of WWII was only a one-night gig this time around, information on future engagements in the New York area and across the country can be found at www.marcovicci.com.

 

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