Broadway Baby Christine Andreas adapted to cabaret and concert stages as if doing it all along. Elegance, authority, enunciation, vocal control and story awareness have always been signatures. And oh that radiant voice! The artist and her husband/MD/pianist/composer Martin Silvestri loosely frame this show on their joint travels, “thirty-one years of musical meanderings, many newly minted.”
Singing as she wends her way to the stage, Andreas offers Frank Wildhorn/Nan Knighton’s waltzy “Storybook” in English and French. There’s a phrase, a turning point in every song, she tells us, when it takes off, her favorite moment. Notes unfurl. “Fly Me to the Moon” (Bart Howard) begins gauzy, soars, then retreats, a dramatic formula almost consistently applied tonight. “My Heart Stood Still” (Richard Rodgers/Lorenz Hart) emerges a caress.
An anecdote about Andreas’ first cabaret performance, also the first working with Silvestri, finds them in The White House at the behest of George W Bush. After an encore, the president wanted still more. The pair, who met and developed the show from scratch over prior months, had nothing prepared. Her MD, having seen her in My Fair Lady, rescued the day with “I Could’ve Danced All Night.” (Alan Jay Lerner/ Frederick Loewe) Phrases arc. Soprano is powerful, exuberant, no longer innocent. (
At first against the inclusion of country artist Clint Black’s “Something That We Do” – “I don’t do twang,” she told Silvestri – Andreas discovered a fit: We give ourselves, we give our all/Love isn’t someplace that we fall/It’s something that we do…” she sings with careworn tenderness. Accompaniment seems to weave through in musical figure eights. Howard Dietz/Arthur Schwartz’ “Rhode Island” is famous for you becomes a nod to territory covered. A duet is playful and charming. (Everything fits this evening except a Gershwin medley which veers from the through line.)
The artist met Sammy Cahn while performing in his Words and Music. “He was this high”- she indicates someone perhaps over four feet – “but had an ego to make up for it and told great stories” She affectionately imitates the icon. “Teach Me Tonight” is breathy, but not naïve. Songs change with experience. Never a wispy sort of ingenue, Andreas imbues her work with different colors these days, making them relatable on perhaps a more personal level.
“London played an important part in our lives,” the vocalist tells us. Staying on after one of Silvestri’s own shows closed, she recorded her first solo CD. Her rendition of Berkeley Square” (Manning Sherwin/ Eric Maschwitz) conjures a 1940s film. Piano intermittently twitters. Just beautiful. A sentimental “Moon River” bookends “Two for the Road.” (Henry Mancini/Johnny Mercer) Andreas stands next to her husband with warmth and solidarity.
According to Silvestri his “Love is Good” was penned 25 years before meeting Andreas to whom he gifted it recognizing Kismet. It exudes a kind of dignified gravitas. (English lyrics, Tony Tanner, French lyrics, Nancy Mariani Brucker and Linda Cahill) “Memory is imperfect but sweeter because of it” introduces a duet of Alan Jay Lerner/Frederick Loewe’s “I Remember It Well.” With a dash of ersatz Maurice Chevalier.
“I Love Paris” (Cole Porter) and “La Vie en Rose” (Louiguy/Edith Piaf), the latter on Andreas’ latest CD, allow natural theatricality and Francophile heart free rein. That ebullience extends to “She Loves Me!” –here, “He”(Jerry Boch/Sheldon Harnick) during which Silvestri bounces and Andreas sparkles.
This is an urbane evening by a gifted, polished artist with a symbiotic collaborator.
Cafe Carlyle is a treat. An old school hotel venue with attentive service.
Photos by David Andrako
Christine Andreas: Two for the Road
Marti Silvestri- MD/Piano
Café Carlyle
Madison Avenue between 76th and 77th Streets
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