Cabaret Review • New York • Friday, May 21, 1999

With a Cool Temperament, Giving Warmth to Standards

 

 

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

Demure, polite, blessed with near perfect intonation and a coloratura register that is as precisely deployed as it is flexible, Maureen McGovern is the very model of a cabaret singer who moves comfortably from conservative jazz to soaring movie themes, from classic pop standards to operetta. If the pronounced nasality in her mid-to-upper range recalls Barbra Streisand, Ms. McGovern projects little of Ms. Streisand's drive and neediness. When she focuses her technique on standards like "The Man I Love" or "The Nearness of You," two of the high points in her new act, Ms. McGovern is as good as a traditional pop singer gets.

On Tuesday evening, the singer opened a five-week engagement at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel with agreeably even-tempered renditions of "Lucky to Be Me" and "Nice In' Easy," and followed them

   with the ruefully good-humored announcement that she is in the final months of her 49th year. Continuing with a version of "Fever," based on Peggy Lee's interpretation, she kept the temperature low and emphasized the lyric's playful Shakespearean mannerisms. Ms. McGovern's show pays homage to two composers whose centennials are being celebrated this year: Duke Ellington and Hoagy Carminchael. She is accompanied on piano by Lee Musiker, a remarkably empathetic and inventive virtuoso of, pop-jazz moods. Ms. McGovern's delicately ornamented versions of "Caravan," "Take the A Train" and "It Don't Mean a Thing" were so sedate that these rhythmic power houses sounded almost like dainty little art songs. More at home with Carmichael, she hit the show's high point with "Skylark," an artistic Rorschach test of a song, performed unaccompanied and infused with a wistful optimism.