Michael Feinstein: Winter Dreams
The cabaret singer offers up one of his most entertaining holiday shows in recent memory.
Fortunately, the woman didn't ruin one of Feinstein's most impressively entertaining holiday shows in recent memory. True, he does relatively little of the traditional holiday fare. To set the mood, he does indeed open with a pairing of Christmas songs by Jerry Herman ("We Need a Little Christmas" with "The Best Christmas of All"), but after that, he only performs three more -- and even then he doesn't do them in a conventional manner.
His "Jingle Bells" has a wild and wonderful arrangement by Kay Thompson, further adapted by Feinstein's musical director, John Oddo. When he sings "That's What I Want for Christmas" you ultimately discover that it's really more of a love song than a holiday number. But he goes a bit too far by folding "White Christmas" into "I Love a Piano," since refusing to sing the former completely is the equivalent of turning off the television in the middle of watching It's a Wonderful Life.
In past holiday shows, Feinstein has always come up with a quirky choice to represent Hannukah, such as "Hannukah in Santa Monica." More recently -- perhaps because of the dearth of good Hannukah numbers -- he has turned to more serious songs to satisfy his sense of balance. This year, he sang a stirring number written by Holocaust survivor Leo Fuld titled "Where Can I Go?"
After that, it's clear sailing for the Scrooges in the audience who have already had enough of the Christmas season. Although Feinstein finds clever ways to tie some of his songs to the season, he's just singing the American Songbook, which is what he does best. From the torchy romanticism of "Begin the Beguine" to the unabashed declaration of love found in a song like "The More I See You," Feinstein taps into the emotional underpinnings of his material with a warm voice and a delicate sense of interpretation.
Consummate performer that he is, if Feinstein simply sat at the piano and performed for an hour, it would be heaven for pretty much everyone in the audience. Instead, though, he has nine top-notch people on the stage behind him, including Bucky Pizzarelli on guitar, Jay Leonhart on bass, Mark Vinci on reeds, and backup singing queen Margaret Dorn.
Best of all, his patter is funny, his information is fascinating, and his voice is versatile -- which all combine to create the winning package that is Michael Feinstein.