3rd November
2012.
Reviewed by
Bill Stephens
“I’m a singer who writes songs”, Melissa Manchester told me before she arrived back in Australia for her current tour, and what a superb singer she turned out to be.
For her concert at The Canberra Southern Cross
Club Melissa Manchester offered a fascinatingly eclectic program which paid homage to her many
collaborators, among them Carole Bayer Sager, Burt Bacharach, Marvin Hamlish,
Kenny Logins and Peter Allen.
Though at her peak
as a hit-maker in the 70’s and 80’s, Manchester is still a very fine singer,
with a warm, throaty voice, and the ability to make every song an intimate
conversation between singer and audience. It came, therefore, as little surprise
when she confided that, between tours, she lectures in “The Art of
Conversational Singing” at the University of Southern California. Her mastery of the lyric was immediately
obvious from her very opening number, a gently, welcoming rendition of “I’ll Know You by Your Heart”.
This was followed with one of her best known songs, the
Academy Award nominated theme from the
film “Ice Castles”, “Looking Through the
Eyes of Love”, sung against a filmed background of edited shots from the
movie, together with some footage of her singing it accompanied by Marvin
Hamlish and a symphony orchestra. The effect was both magical and moving.
Later in the
concert she again featured a cleverly edited filmed backing as she sang an
arrangement of “Memories” and “You’ve Got a Friend”, accompanied on
film by Barry Manilow, with whom she engaged in friendly banter as they sang.
For the rest
of the program she was accompanied by a four-piece instrumental combo of two
guitars, drums and keyboards, plus an excellent backing singer, which she
joined on occasion, as for her rocky arrangement of “Just Too Many People”, to play and sing from the piano.
She didn’t
feature only her own songs though, and among the surprises was the original
Ella Fitzgerald up-tempo arrangement of “Lady
Be Good” complete with scat chorus, and a sultry, tongue-in-cheek version
of the song made popular by The Ronettes, “Be
My Baby”.
However it
was her own catalogue that the audience had come to hear and she didn’t disappoint, offering gloriously heartfelt versions of Carole Bayer Sager’s “Come In From The Rain” and “Don’t
Cry Out Loud”, and a song which she
wrote with Kenny Loggins, “Whenever
I Call You Friend”. There were also definitive
versions of her two biggest hits “Midnight
Blue” and “You Should See How She
Talks About You”.
Of course
the audience screamed for an encore, and again she surprised. This time with a
tribute to singer Dusty Springfield, with a delightfully raunchy version of “Son of a Preacher Man”.
Melissa
Manchester has promised to return to Australia in the not-too-distant future.
If she does, don’t miss the opportunity to hear her sing her songs in person.
It’s a truly memorable experience.
