To those who revere the inextinguishable music of George Gershwin, Saturday was something close to a religious occasion: the 100th anniversary of the great composer’s birth.
Music lovers around the world marked the event by flocking to all-Gershwin concerts, but Chicago listeners fared especially well. For though there’s no dearth of performers who consider themselves expert in Gershwin’s scores, only a few genuinely merit that description, among them singer-pianist Michael Feinstein.
Unlike classical performers who often cannot grasp the distinctly American rhythms of Gershwin’s music or jazz artists who boldly rework his scores (as Gershwin himself did in performance), Feinstein strives simply to dispatch this music as the composer wrote it. That’s a far more difficult task than it might seem, however, for a Gershwin tune demands rhythmic precision as well as a hint of swing, impeccable pitch and enunciation as well as a breezy way with a phrase.
Feinstein long ago earned a reputation for interpreting Gershwin’s work with faithfulness to the printed score and to the vernacular performance style this music demands. But his “Feinstein Sings Gershwin” concert Saturday night in the Chicago Theatre, broadcast on National Public Radio, amounted to something more than just another traversal of familiar Gershwin fare.
In effect, it may have marked a turning point in his evolution as performing artist.
In part, that’s because Feinstein quietly had stepped away from the performing circuit for a couple of years to rejuvenate himself.
Now that he has returned to a full schedule of touring, the results of his sabbatical are open to evaluation, and they are impressive, to say the least.
Vocally, Feinstein never has sounded better, his tone bigger, deeper and more varied in color and attack than in the past. He now has sufficient vocal control to convey hushed intimacy in an auditorium as spacious as the Chicago Theatre, yet he can attain considerable force and volume without appearing to strain his instrument.
Even Feinstein’s pianism sounds more persuasive than in the past, his lush accompaniments overflowing with beguiling countermelodies and clever musical quotations. As ever, Feinstein remains his own best collaborator, following his vocal lines more closely than any bandleader or piano accompanist could.
So even though Feinstein shared the immense stage of the Chicago Theatre with approximately 50 instrumentalists, he proved most effective singing alone at the piano.
In one of the evening’s more disarming moments, Feinstein entertained requests from the audience, creating an impromptu medley of Gershwin hits. Just as the audience was chuckling at the sly humor he brought to “Just Another Rhumba,” the man switched to a haunting and ineffably tender version of “But Not for Me.”
But both of these tunes served as windup for a tour-de-force reading of a Gershwin classic that male singers rarely attempt, “Summertime,” the sublime aria from “Porgy and Bess.” The dramatic intensity of Feinstein’s low-register singing here, with quotations from “It Ain’t Necessarily So” turning up in his florid piano accompaniment, made this the evening’s high point.
Add to that the singer’s jazz-tinged version of “Fascinating Rhythm” (with Count Basie-like orchestral accompaniment) and an exquisitely lyric “They Can’t Take That Away from Me” (with a glorious re-creation of the 1949 MGM orchestration), and Feinstein clearly was giving Chicago a state-of-the-art celebration of Gershwin’s art.
Gershwin deserved no less.
