October 22, 2003

WEDNESDAY NIGHT AT THE CABARET CONVENTION
Town Hall, New York City
Reported by Alan Kull

The third night of the 14th Annual Cabaret Convention was held last night in Town Hall. With a solid line-up of performers well known beyond the cabaret world, the event was sold out far in advance. And what a night it was. From start to finish, not a sour note or disappointing performance was to be found.

The theme for the night was "Drawn by Hirschfeld A Centennial Celebration," a tribute to the late caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. All of the evening's performers had at one time or another been drawn by Hirschfeld, some of them several times. All week long displayed on stage left has been a large poster of Hirschfeld's drawing of Mabel Mercer. Last night the stage featured a life size poster of each of the evening's performers. Each performer made their entrance walking out behind their poster as it was rolled across the stage. After Donald Smith made the introduction, the poster was pulled away, exposing the performer waiting behind. Even Donald Smith himself had his caricature on stage and made his initial entrance in the same style to open the show. ...

The closing act of the evening was Maureen McGovern. Breaking with tradition, Maureen got to do three numbers - opening with "Favorite Things," closing with an amazing "Before The Parade Passes By" - but the highlight of her set was the middle selection. Generally when the last act performs for the evening audience members start heading for the exits, hoping to beat the rush. Last night though not a sound was to be heard as Maureen sang, perhaps as a precursor to Thursday's upcoming program, a Capella and un-miked "Over The Rainbow."

Wednesday night's program was one of the most satisfying programs to be presented by the Convention in several years. It's hard to pick a particular favorite number; the show was excellence from start to finish. It was a night of star quality with superb pacing and terrific performances from all. The show held the audience's attention throughout....

Stu Hamstra's Cabaret Hotline Online

Music review
Saturday, October 11, 2003
McGovern, Pops give rousing tribute

By Janelle Gelfand
The Cincinnati Enquirer

"Happy birthday to all Buckeyes," announced Erich Kunzel, to open the Cincinnati Pops' tribute to Ohio's 200th in Music Hall Friday.

The birthday party included visits from two famous Ohio women: Mrs. Hope Taft, First Lady of Ohio, who narrated the premiere of a new work to hail the Bicentennial, and Maureen McGovern, Broadway diva and Youngstown native, who wowed with her own tribute to Richard Rodgers.

Although McGovern has appeared - and recorded - with the Pops many times during her three-decade career, she just seems to get better each time. Her encore was her Academy Award-winning hit, "The Morning After," but she dazzled from the first moment she walked onstage in a black cat suit and fringed shawl. Even though she just turned 54 - "Global warming is just one collective hot flash," she quipped - one gets the feeling she has miles to go.

Her tribute traveled through the great songbooks of Rodgers and Hart, and Rodgers and Hammerstein. She effortlessly projected all the wit and genius of the lyrics in numbers such as a "Lovesick Medley" and "Falling in Love with Love."

Her voice was versatile, whether belting it out with arms outstretched, or whispering a phrase to "It Never Entered My Mind." Backed by her own polished combo and the Pops, she jazzed up her delivery - even in "Climb Every Mountain." Her ability to scat brought back memories of Ella Fitzgerald, and she could climb to the high notes like a clarinet's wail.

When McGovern put down her mike and sang "My Funny Valentine" a cappella, her generous voice soared through the hall with dead-on intonation, and the audience held its collective breath. In between songs like "Lover" and "My Favorite Things," McGovern carried on a running, funny commentary, singing excerpts from her favorite musicals in a high-speed "fricassee," and kicking up her high heels as she strolled the stage.

E-mail jgelfand@enquirer.com

Great singers lead us to the truth at the heart of great songs. Saturday night at Orchestra Hall, the extraordinary vocalist Maureen McGovern led us to that emotional core over and over in a two-part concert — a celebration of the music of Richard Rodgers and a tour de force of jazz standards from the 1940s.

McGovern's first big hit, "The Morning After," won an Academy Award three decades ago. On Saturday, she quickly dealt with the question of her age by announcing that she "was clinging to the last month of her 53rd year."

People often talk about McGovern's dazzling "instrument" as if it were a thing you could pick up at the music store, rather than the result of a lifetime spent honing anatomy, intelligence and soul.

McGovern does dazzle. She can hover on a high note light as air, wail until the skin on your neck prickles, or send fireworks of notes into the stratosphere in precise duet with clarinet or saxophone.

In the exquisite loneliness of "It Never Entered My Mind" you hear her commitment to conveying the song's truth through that instrument. With Jeff Harris, her music director and pianist, McGovern created an aura of time-out-of-time in "Where or When."

McGovern didn't need Orchestra Hall's amplification, as she demonstrated in the show's finest moment. She let her arms drop by her sides, and — without mike or accompaniment — stepped to the front of the stage to sing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." Her resonant voice sounded softer, but clearly audible. The silence in the house deepened. On behalf of all dreamers, she questioned, "Why, oh why, can't I?" and the applause exploded.

In the second half, her backup expanded to include Dick Sarpola on bass (scampering fast and furious under a jubilant, slightly crazed "Ding, Dong the Witch is Dead"); Brian Scanlon on reeds (playing a classy, clean saxophone duet in "Take the A Train"); and Steve Fidyk on drums. Signature tunes abounded, including Ella Fitzgerald's "A Tisket A Tasket" and Peggy Lee's "Fever."

McGovern and arranger Harris pulled off the tricky feat of acknowledging the standard versions while simultaneously making the music McGovern's own.

TwinCities.com

Weekend Reviews

AUSTIN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, AUSTIN, TX
Monday, June 2, 2003
Palmer wowed by McGovern's underrated voice

By Michael Barnes
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Does Maureen McGovern ever have a bad voice day? Unjustly neglected by the public since her 1972 one-hit wonder, "The Morning After," the versatile singer gained -- or renewed -- several thousand fans during a smashing Austin Symphony Orchestra pops concert Friday. . . .

Then came McGovern. Magically, the sound system became her best friend as she dished out songs commemorating the centennial of composer Richard Rodgers. With ostensible ease, she tossed off standard after standard, mostly in jazzy arrangements that made her sound like Ella Fitzgerald crossed with Rosemary Clooney and Julie Andrews.

McGovern possesses that kind of a range. Her tween-song patter was just as smart and sassy as her on-target singing. Commenting on Rodgers' longtime collaborators, the boozy Lorenz Hart and more upbeat Oscar Hammerstein, she quipped: "Larry always saw the glass as half empty -- in more ways than one -- while Oscar saw it as half full." Then she delivered a canary-yellow rendition of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "A Cock-Eyed Optimist." Although her interpretive style more nearly matched Hart's snappy lyrics, McGovern devoted a full volume of warmth to the Hammerstein material.

Why isn't McGovern headlining on Broadway more often? Message to the public: Buy her albums, attend her concerts, seek out her cabaret appearances and don't ever, ever underestimate this artist again.

AMERICAN-STATESMAN

ORANGE COUNTY PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
COSTA MESA, CA

THE MOST GLORIOUS SINGER

By ZAN DUBIN SCOTT
The Center, March 2003

Most people know Maureen McGovern for her Academy Award-winning rendition of "The Morning After." But cabaret fans know that she's a talent unlike any other. She's been compared to Barbra Streisand, but she has a sound all her own. Her career spans numerous Grammy-nominated recordings, as well as a host of theatre, television, film and radio credits. The late, great Mel Tormé summed it up best: "Maureen McGovern is, quite simply, the most glorious singer to come down the pike in a month of Sundays."

Freedom to sing rare gems and dusted-off favorites--that's what makes cabaret so appealing to Maureen McGovern. "With an astute cabaret audience, you can find the most obscure thing and someone will know it," says the versatile chanteuse. After three decades on the stage, McGovern has plenty of pet obscurities. But these days, she's also reprising the well-known hit that made her famous-- with good reason. Thirty years ago last fall, she recorded "The Morning After" and a few months later, the Academy Award-winning theme from The Poseidon Adventure went gold.

"I still get letters from people telling me what a profound effect the song has had on their lives and continues to," McGovern says. "It's a timeless, hopeful song and even more relevant today."

Devoted fans will know that following "The Morning After," McGovern quickly went on to record "We May Never Love Like This Again," the theme from the film The Towering Inferno, which also won an Oscar and went gold. Expect one, maybe both, as an encore to her current show, which celebrates another anniversary: the centennial of Richard Rodgers' birth. McGovern likes to say that this titan of musical theater provided the soundtrack to the lives of all who lived in mid-20th century. Her tribute program includes some 20 Rodgers collaborations with lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II, such as "Surrey With the Fringe on Top" (Oklahoma!) "Love Me Tonight" (Carousel), "Hello Young Lovers" (The King and I), "This Can't Be Love" and a slew of waltzes.

With "panache and style to spare," her "wondrous voice encompasses so many styles and sounds it's hard to describe," wrote the Oakland Tribune when she took the show north last November. The New York Times had similar words: "McGovern's beautiful semi-operatic voice, perfect enunciation and innate sense of propriety prevent her from turning the songs into gushy showcases for a phony show business empathy. In allowing songs to breathe, she brings them to emotional life."

For her part, McGovern heaps praise on Rodgers as one of our greatest melody writers ever and one of the most versatile. "He wrote such wry, sophisticated things with Hart and such wide-open, optimistic Americana with Hammerstein," she said in a recent phone interview during a tour stop in San Francisco. "They were equally brilliant compositions, and yet the two lyricists had vastly different characters. With Hart, Rodgers had to extract lyrics like teeth. Hammerstein just handed him the completed words."

McGovern has enjoyed a partnership of sorts with Rodgers her entire career, which has encompassed musical comedy, jazz, the theater, symphony concerts, recordings, children's music, film, television and, of course, the Great American song book. Her first musical role was Maria in The Sound of Music, she appeared as Nellie in South Pacific, and she recently portrayed Anna in the national tour of The King and I, a childhood dream come true. Remember the first Airplane! movie? She sang "I Enjoy Being a Girl" (Flower Drum Song) in full nun regalia, although the bit got "left on the cutting room floor," she says.

Song has been a part of McGovern's life from childhood. Born in Youngstown, Ohio, she'd sing everybody's part when her father's friends came over to rehearse their barbershop quartet. "It was the first sense of harmony and music I had," she remembers. As a youth, she sang in the church choir and took piano lessons. In high school, she taught herself to play guitar and skipped college to hit the road singing folk music, then toured the Midwest lounge circuit with top 40 hits. "Discovered" by her first producer during this time at a Ramada Inn where she was performing, she recorded "The Morning After" soon after in 1972. "The film, by all indications was going to be huge," she recalls, "so my producer thought it would be nice for an unknown artist to have that kind of publicity."

Unknown no more, Irwin Allen, who produced The Poseidon Adventure, wanted McGovern to sing the theme to his next movie The Towering Inferno, which also went gold. But because of the industry's vicissitudes, the singer had to work as a secretary for awhile following this. But her typing days soon ended forever when Joseph Papp cast her as Mabel in his production of The Pirates of Penzance. It was an auspicious Broadway debut, and McGovern moved to New York City, where she stayed for the next 18 years.

They were busy years filled with touring with the likes of Mel Tormé and the Duke Ellington Orchestra, tribute concerts to such other masters as George Gershwin, and recording. The singer is proud of two albums of voice and piano that she recorded with jazz pianist Mike Renzi, Another Woman in Love and the Grammy-nominated The Pleasure of His Company.

Other recent projects have included acting-only appearances at the prestigious Carpenter Square Theater in Oklahoma and in the world premiere of Paris Barclay's musical Letters From Nam, which takes a humanistic look at the Vietnam War.

McGovern, who moved to Los Angeles some six years ago, has also long been involved with various charities, the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) chief among them. She's performed on the Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon for 22 years. "I just fell in love with the people" associated with the MDA, she says. "When a child or an adult is diagnosed with neuro-muscular disease, it affects the whole family, and I was just amazed at the strength and the humor and the hope these families had. So year after year I go back and work with them."

During one of those MDA telethons, something strange happened to McGovern. Tragically, her niece Carolyn had previously been diagnosed with dermatomyositis, an autoimmune muscular disease, some dozen years ago at age 2. But thanks to her volunteer work, McGovern knew where to go and what to do. Today, Carolyn competes in equestrian events, plays hockey and is on a swim team, McGovern says, and that joyful outcome resulted in a true epiphany while she was singing "The Morning After" on the televised fund-raiser. She'd sung it on the show many times, singing through divorce, a lawsuit and her mother's colon cancer. But this time it was different. This time, the song's message of hope hit home like never before.

"It was my 'aha!' moment," she says, "and I could barely get through the song. I'd come full circle with what 'the morning after' really means."

Along these lines, McGovern describes the next chapter of her life as largely about the healing power of music. She has been studying music therapy and is recording a "library of music that is life-affirming, positive and inspiring," intended to heal mind, body and spirit. Her newest album, Works of Heart, will include "Amazing Grace," "Let There Be Peace on Earth," "Born in the Heart," recorded with the United Nations Children's Choir, and, naturally, "The Morning After." At press time, it was scheduled for release this spring.

"Music is not a cure for cancer," says McGovern, one of nine spokespeople for the American Music Therapy Association, "but it can strengthen the immune system. The sound of the unadorned voice really is like a prayer. It has a strong effect on the body."

McGovern herself has had a strong effect on the causes she gives her time and energy to. She's glad to be in a position to help. "I'm so grateful to be doing as my life work something I love. Performing is a joy, it's the air I breathe. So it's only natural to want to give back."

Zan Dubin Scott writes about the performing and visual arts for such publications as Dance magazine and the Los Angeles Times.

Maureen McGovern
Here’s To Love and Life: A 30th Anniversary Celebration
at Feinstein’s at the Regency
Musical Direction by Jeff Harris

Review by David Hurst
Showbusiness Weekly

Celebrating her 30th year in show business, Maureen McGovern must have a full-length portrait of herself aging away in an attic somewhere as she continues performing around the world. Either that or she’s made a pact with the devil. These are the only conceivable explanations as to how she looks and sounds a good twenty years younger than she is. Easily possessing one of the most technically agile and luminously beautiful voices in the world, McGovern remains a marvel of a singer in her new show at Feinstein’s, Here’s To Love and Life: A 30th Anniversary Celebration through March 15th.

Accompanied by one of her long-time musical partners, Jeff Harris, as well as Dick Sarpola on bass, McGovern opens her set with an impressive and showy a cappella reading of "My Funny Valentine" that commands attention. It’s a risk that pays off as she segues into a host of favorites including tributes to Rosemary Clooney, Peggy Lee and her good friend Mel Torme by way of "Tenderly," "Fever," then "Star Dust," a dizzyingly difficult tune that McGovern tosses off with an effortlessness that makes other singers want to slap her. Her piercing reading of "Once Upon A Time" from All American brought tears to my eyes, as did a beautiful new song by Harris entitled "Arnold" about a woman asking permission from her departed husband to love again. McGovern concludes her show with three Jerry Herman songs, "Each Tomorrow Morning," "Before the Parade Passes By" and "One Person," that meld beautifully into one another and result in a personal statement of defiance and hope. She ends with her signature song, "The Morning After," which she makes sound fresh and vital in the perilous times in which we live.

One of my favorite cabaret memories is seeing McGovern at Rainbow & Stars many years ago at Christmastime. At the end of the show, snow had begun to fall and she sat on the piano to sing "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas," unaccompanied and un-amplified. It was a quintessential New York ‘moment’ of magical perfection that I’ll always treasure and it’s gratifying to report that her lustrous voice still thrills and amazes. Delightfully, Fynsworth Alley is re-issuing her 1997 CD, The Music Never Ends–The Lyrics of Alan & Marilyn Bergman to coincide with her anniversary. With three new songs, it’s a ravishing recording that proves McGovern has many more exciting years ahead–for her and us.

The New York Observer

Happy Hour

Blessed with perfect pitch, intuitive phrasing, an eclectic taste for everything from jazz to classics, and a range that has run out of octaves, Maureen McGovern has been a singer’s singer since she burst on the scene in 1973 with her hit record "The Morning After." Celebrating the 30th anniversary of that Oscar-winning song and some of the highlights of the career that followed, she’s at Feinstein’s at the Regency through March 15. She calls this visit "Here’s to Love and Life," for no particular reason—you gotta have a title or the P.R. people don’t know what to bill you for—except that the times are perilous, and love is just about the only thing left that is understood by all and sundry from here to Baghdad. (Saddam Hussein’s favorite CD—I kid you not—is Sinatra’s Songs for Swingin’ Lovers!) Here is an act devoted to happy, uplifting, restorative songs; I mean, how much more uplifting can you get than Johnny Mercer’s "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive"? Ms. McGovern dedicates it to CNN’s 24/7 coverage of American gloom and global anxiety. And to further demonstrate just how much she’s not kidding, she launches into Bob Merrill’s silly accidental hit, "If I Knew You Were Coming I’d Have Baked a Cake." Harold Arlen’s "Get Happy," Jerry Herman’s "Before the Parade Passes By" and the immortal Mitchell Parish–Hoagy Carmichael classic "Stardust" all take their bows in the keep-smiling campaign. Perfectly modulated vocal tributes to Peggy Lee, Mel Tormé and Rosemary Clooney show off Ms. McGovern’s abundant gifts as a singer of great versatility, without taking anything away from the originals who influenced her. Once pegged the "disaster-theme queen," Ms. McGovern has warmed her chops and learned to relax in recent years. There’s evidence that she also trusts her audience more: Relating a personal story about a calamitous gig singing on an airplane, she reduced the audience to hysterics. Of course, Ms. McGovern’s act—like any act—is carefully constructed to show off the many vocal and musical styles at which she is equally skilled. On one piece of special material, a wild scat singer battles for space inside her head with an opera diva—all to the transposed notes of Johann Sebastian Bach. And who else do you know who can tackle "My Funny Valentine" a cappella, without even a microphone? Any time spent with Maureen McGovern is quality time. At Feinstein’s, you get your money’s worth—and at these prices, that’s saying something.

You may reach Rex Reed via email at: rreed@observer.com.

Here’s to Love and Life: A 30th Anniversary Celebration
Feinsteins at the Regency

Sometimes you just can’t win. Deliver a consummate program that is melodically flawless, lyrically impressive, and smoothly designed, it’s often dismissed as lacking passion. Here’s to Love and Life: A 30th Anniversary Celebration, Maureen McGovern’s show at Feinsteins at the Regency, is a musical program as close to flawless as you are likely to see. With an upbeat spirit and veering toward more of a jazz feel than in other shows, McGovern scats some, swings easily, is funny and, in several songs, truly touching, beginning with her opener. Microphone in hand, with Dick Sarpola on bass and Jeff Harris at the piano, McGovern sings the verse to My Funny Valentine; for the chorus, the accompaniment stops and McGovern puts down the mike to deliver the gorgeous Rodgers melody a capella, first softly and then filling the room with her amazing voice. She communicates Hart’s affecting lyric with heart.

Vocal chops aside, McGovern is savvy around lyrics, articulating with crystal clarity and witty phrasing to Comden, Green, and Styne’s “ultimate patter song,” If. Perhaps a signature song for her is Scat/Diva with lyrics by Barron, melody by Bach, jazz/coloratura by McGovern, and delivered early in the show, the optimism of Ac-cent-uate-The Positive and Get Happy seems to reflect the artist’s own outlook.

McGovern centers her show on influences and milestones in her life, including, of course, the big-seller, The Morning After, which ignited her career in 1973. Acknowledging singers she admires includes Tenderly for Rosemary Clooney, Fever with appropriate Peggy Lee sizzle, and as a nod to Mel Torme, her mentor, McGovern sings Stardust. Her patter is affable, to the point, but not all that memorable. Any song by Maureen McGovern, however, is memorable, even if some deem it too perfect for comfort. All singers should labor under such a handicap.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Cabaret Scenes Magazine

Current Reviews
Tue., Mar. 11, 2003, 6:42pm PT
Maureen McGovern -- Here's to Love and Life
Robert L. Daniels
VARIETY

Once dubbed "the disaster theme queen," Maureen McGovern remembers a year when first-class postage stamps were 8¢ and Sonny and Cher, Columbo and Maude dominated television. The year was 1973, and "The Poseidon Adventure" set the pattern for a rush of disaster movies. The film's hopeful theme, "The Morning After," nabbed an Oscar and became a trademark tune for McGovern, who is celebrating its 30th anniversary in her new show at Feinstein's at the Regency. While she may have stumbled on the lyric at her opening performance, the pop anthem remains a bold and timely song of survival and a stepping stone for McGovern's career as an accomplished chanteuse.
McGovern opened with an a cappella perf of "My Funny Valentine," sans mike, that quickly revealed the delicacy and purity of an uncommonly assured voice of great range and control. But we already knew about that.

Centerpiece is a warming tribute to a trio of recently departed singers: Mel Torme (with whom she toured extensively), Rosemary Clooney and Peggy Lee. Few acts can boast such evergreens as "Star Dust," "Fever" and "Tenderly." McGovern invests such standards with lush velvety textures that plumb the depths of romanticism.

"If," by Comden & Green, provides McGovern with a grandly theatrical, comic tongue twister, and she sings it with giddy, saucer-eyed charm. Fun, too, is the Gershwins' chin-up advice in "Stiff Upper Lip," braced with a shimmering top-scale scat.

McGovern gets the jump on the widely anticipated centennial celebrations for composer Harold Arlen, forthcoming later this month by K.T. Sullivan in the Algonquin Oak Room and by Jane Monheit at the Cafe Carlyle. From her 1996 Sterling CD "Out of This World," McGovern reprises Arlen's brightly affirmative declarations "Accent-tchu-ate the Positive" and "Get Happy."

The diva, who recently appeared in the Sundance Institute Theater revival of "Dear World," Jerry Herman's 1969 musical adaptation of "The Madwoman of Chaillot," sings "Each Tomorrow Morning" and "One Person," book-ending Dolly Levi's brassy survival march "Before the Parade Passes By." To paraphrase the latter, Maureen McGovern can "certainly hold her head high with the best of them."

McGovern matches remarkable voice with remarkable songs

By MIKE DREW
Special to the Journal Sentinel

Last Updated: Feb. 15, 2003

In today's gimmick-filled pop music world, Maureen McGovern gets by with merely two: a world-class voice and some of the finest songs ever written.

Listening to McGovern with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra turned out to be a lovely way to spend Valentine's evening for 1,812 customers in Uihlein Hall. The holiday is over, but - with classic pop singing a rarity - you are herewith advised to help McGovern conclude her three-day visit at 7:30 tonight in the Marcus Center.

McGovern, who is 53 and speculates on stage that global warming partly results from her hot flashes, had hit records decades ago. Today, she concentrates on the composing legends - Legrand, Gershwin, Arlen among them - opening with Rodgers and Hart's "My Funny Valentine" (what else?). There, and later on Carmichael's "Skylark," she demonstrated that her remarkable voice can easily fill any room without electronic or instrumental help.

With reason, her bios call her voice "the Stradivarius." It commands a startling four octaves, with coloratura highs, a Mermanesque belt and impeccable phrasing. Augmented with several strong local jazz players, the MSO kept up admirably, even swinging at times, under the lead of her pianist-arranger, Jeff Harris, and drummer Steve Houghton, an ex-Kenoshan.

McGovern is equally relaxed and conversational working large venues. Friday, she roamed the stage, working for laughs, sat atop Harris' grand piano and on a stool to deliver her intimate material.

McGovern concentrated on the vast Rodgers songbook, both Hart and Hammerstein chapters. The evening's highlights included Rodgers' lush "This Nearly Was Mine" and the poignant Mandel-Bergman "Where Do You Start?"

A version of this story appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Feb. 16, 2003.