The most profound artists never stop reinventing themselves, perpetually finding new ways to reach an audience and refine an art.
In Tony Bennett’s case, the process of musical rejuvenation seems to gain momentum as the years unfold. Certainly the leather-lunged crooner who belted “Rags to Riches” and “Because of You” in the 1950s was quite a different artist from the sublimely poetic interpreter who played the Rosemont Theatre on Saturday night.
Even during the past few seasons, Bennett’s music has become leaner, simpler, softer and more personally revealing. He dares to whisper before an audience of thousands, he takes ballads at astonishingly slow tempos, he stretches a melodic line past the breaking point, allowing individual notes to hang suspended in time and space.
The audacity of Bennett’s singing seemed all the more striking this time around because of the very nature of this program, which amounted to a kind of career retrospective. In an intermissionless show that ran more than two hours, Bennett covered every significant phase of his work and radically redefined it.
How Bennett was able to convert his pulpy hit “Rags to Riches” into something modern was a bit of a mystery, but surely it had something to do with his breezy delivery and conversational cadences. If the piece once epitomized the excesses of ’50s pop, this time it sounded remarkably unadorned, straightforward and honest.
“I Wanna’ Be Around” remains one of Bennett’s signature torch songs, but now there was none of the self-pity or pathos that mark Bennett’s famous recording. Instead, he delivered this song of revenge with unnerving dispassion, as if masking the emotion that he once wore on his sleeve.
In virtually every number that Bennett sang, he similarly tossed aside the conventional reading in favor of something fresher and more startling.
Who else would dare to sing the exuberant “Chicago” as a slow and sultry love song? Yet Bennett’s reading created an aura of romance and reverie one rarely associates with the old warhorse.
Even the song accompaniments caught listeners by surprise. Though Bennett began his show as he always has done, with pianist Ralph Sharon’s trio providing a soft-spoken backdrop, at the evening’s midpoint a large string orchestra appeared on stage, thereafter providing lush chordal support for most of Bennett’s ballads. When the singer later switched into the uptempo mode, a roaring big band appeared out of nowhere.
That Bennett can turn his musical world upside down in this way as he approaches his 70th birthday may help explain why he thrives while so many of his contemporaries long ago were consigned to the cut-out bins.
The man’s music is as fresh as the latest pop hit–and a great deal savvier.
