“I think great singers are vessels,” says Ann Hampton Callaway. “They seem to be messengers.”
Callaway knows from great singing; she’s a supreme interpreter of pop standards herself. When we spoke, I was looking forward to hearing her at the Mahaffey in St. Pete, where she was due to perform with the Boston Pops on Mar. 6 in a tribute to maybe the greatest pop singer of them all, Barbra Streisand.
She went on to ask a rhetorical question about great singing: “Can we ever take it apart and analyze it?” Her answer was “no,” and on some level I have to agree. Good music writers (like CL’s own Leilani Polk) can paint sounds with words, but music is finally ineffable. It expresses what words can’t by themselves. And like any live art form, music has to be experienced in order to be appreciated.
So I’ve been happy in recent weeks to have been present for a bunch of live music I’d never heard in places I’d never heard it.
Like, for instance, Jane Monheit at the Largo Cultural Center on Valentine’s Day. Monheit is an appealing contradiction: an elegantly precise singer with a relaxed girl-next-door appeal — she kicked off her recently purchased high heels halfway through the show and seemed much relieved. Equally at ease with ballads and bossa nova, she made Largo’s big auditorium feel like an intimate nightclub.
Monheit attracted a good-sized crowd, but who woulda thunk chamber music would pack ’em in? Actually, it’s not that rare at St. Pete’s Palladium, says Executive Director Paul Wilborn, but even he seemed a little shocked by the 500-plus turnout for the inaugural performance by the Palladium Chamber Players on Feb. 20. Four stellar performers with international careers — Florida Orchestra Concertmaster Jeff Multer on violin, Danielle Farina on viola, cellist Edward Arron and pianist Jeewon Park — played a sublime program of Beethoven, Brahms and Dohnayi that boded well for future concerts in the series.
I’m not a huge opera buff, but Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers is one of my husband’s favorites, so we made the trip south on Feb. 24 to see the production by Sarasota Opera. No fat ladies singing here: the principals, besides having glorious voices, were also matinee-idol beauteous. Plus, they could act. The orchestra was lush, the sets were posh, and the crowd was huge (and, um, advanced in years; they made Larry and me feel very young, for which we felt very grateful).
Last weekend, the music came to us. We hosted a performance in the second annual Living Room Festival, the Best of the Bay-winning house concert series. If you’ve ever considered throwing open your own doors for such an event, do it. About 25 or so friends and neighbors came to the show, sitting on folding chairs and listening to the gently incisive songs of Hannah Miller, a young singer-songwriter who looks like a young Natalie Wood and sings like a slightly jaded angel. Accompanied by her husband James on mandolin, she held us, rapt, for two sets with intermission, and pretty much endeared herself to us permanently. When we listen to Hannah’s music on CD now, we’ll remember what it was like to hear those songs for the first time, sung in front of our fireplace.
Which brings me to our cover story this week. You could think of the Gasparilla Music Festival as Tampa’s largest living room concert, in Tampa’s largest living room — Curtis Hixon Park. The festival’s mix of laid-back charm and world-class talent is quintessentially Tampa Bay, so, as Leilani says in her preview, go already! (And while you’re in the park, check out the Phillips Collection of American art at TMA — it’s flat-out dazzling.)
Meanwhile, I can’t wait to hear Ann Hampton Callaway sing Streisand. An admittedly daunting task that — taking on the songs that a legendary singer has indelibly made her own. But hearing Callaway talk about how she dared to perform “People” gave me not only a new understanding of the song, but of Streisand and of Callaway herself. You can read more in my review/interview.
This article appears in Mar 7-13, 2013.