Liza Minnelli will soldier through surgeries, divorces and rehab, then turn around and put on a Broadway show about making her comeback.
She’ll get nostalgic for a minute— as if there were a minute she wasn’t— and perform a concert of songs from the films of her late father, the director Vincente Minnelli.
Last year, while recuperating from knee surgery, she recorded an album in her bedroom— “Confessions,” her jazz record released last September. She sat up in bed, she said during a recent telephone interview, confined there for three weeks, and sang while legendary music director Billy Stritch played piano. Her record label liked it and decided to release it.
When your name comes with a song about how it’s spelled, anything is possible.
The album is tender and restrained, and subsequently fantastic. It offers a surprisingly introspective Liza, one more contemplative about love and life than we’re used to seeing.
But the true love of her life, the one that matters most, perhaps, is not with any individual. Not with her audience, her co-stars, her four ex-husbands, her father and probably not even with Mama, Judy Garland.
Her real love affair is with her songs. The romance began at age 8.
“It was my hobby, learning lyrics and songs,” she says, “because they expressed what I was feeling so much better than I could. My father used to play Gershwin all the time, so I learned those. They explained to me how I was feeling.”
To hear her wax nostalgic about her childhood can be spellbinding, with the treasure trove of personalities, and also lackluster, with the lack of anyone else. Because what mode of measurement exists for a life lived completely in the spotlight? Where does one go for beauty and magnificence when all that surrounds you, it would appear, is beautiful and magnificent?
“I choose songs for their story— if it’s just a beautiful song,” says Minnelli. “I think everybody, when they hear a song, goes into a certain mood. When you hear something it affects you, right? Maybe you have a memory. I create that for myself, and then I sing it.”
Minnelli will re-create those memories when she performs at 8 p. m. Friday in the Seneca Niagara Casino. It is her second area appearance in as many years.
Her repertoire these days is focused on tracks from “Confessions,” which should sit well in this intimate venue. But Minnelli also comes with a chest of classics ready for a dusting. She is happy to oblige.
“There’s an angle of gratitude in there, I must say. It’s my job,” she says. “Each night, I have to sing ‘New York, New York’ and ‘Cabaret’ like I’ve never sung [them] before. And that’s where the acting training comes in, where you really are in character.”
Her star-making role at 23 as Sally Bowles in 1972’s “Cabaret,” based on the John Kander and Fred Ebb-penned stage musical, was a defining moment. It earned her the Academy Award for best actress and established her performance style, which is both theatrical and accessible. She has sung the film’s torchy “Maybe This Time” and title song countless times. She could phone it in, but she doesn’t.
Her theatrical interpretation is rare in today’s music, even with large-scale production numbers from “Glee” and Lady Gaga, whom she calls smart and “a really good singer.” There are few, if any, theater-pop crossover acts like the one Minnelli had in her youth. Her 1989 dance album, “Results,” produced by Euro synth masters the Pet Shop Boys, featured a disco version of Stephen Sondheim’s famous ballad, “Losing My Mind.”
But Minnelli is simpler now, in her music and in her presentation. She tours constantly and releases live albums every few years. Even with a full orchestra, her shows are pulled off without much ado, without many costume changes, and without reserve. For her, the songs are the stars. In them, she finds her childhood, her hopes, her joy, her distress, her friends, her mama. Her reason.
“For each song I have a character sheet. What does her hair look like? Where does she come from? What happened right up until the second she sang this song?” Minnelli explains. “Somebody must ask the question. It’s a character study.”
Concert Preview
Liza Minnelli
8 p. m. Friday in the Seneca Niagara Casino Events Center, 310 Fourth St., Niagara Falls.
Tickets are $55-$85 (box office). Call 278-4944 or visit www.senecaniagaracasino.com.
This article is by By Benjamin Siegel and appeared in the Buffalo News:
http://www.buffalonews.com/entertainment/gusto/music/concert-previews/article572752.ece
or click on the header of this post to be directed to buffalonews.com
No comments:
Post a Comment