Julie Budd: They Wrote the Songs
Julie Budd
They Wrote the Songs
Metropolitan Room, NYC, May 13, 2015
Reviewed by Elizabeth Ahlfors for Cabaret Scenes
They Wrote the Songs and Julie Budd brought in the audience. As the Metropolitan Room’s latest Artist-In-Residence, Budd faced a standing-room-only audience for her program, featuring songs by some of the greatest American songwriters.
There is a familiarity about Julie Budd, partly because of a natural likeability and partly because she’s a link to the era of grand pop divas with great musical taste. Budd has long been compared to Streisand, another Brooklyn girl and obviously a vocal and stylistic influence. A professional singer since age 12, Budd, at 61, doesn’t always strike the note in the center, but she still has the impressive dynamics, show-stopping vocal range and astute phrasing shown in the long-ago The Merv Griffin Show.
Today Budd’s sense of drama has only heightened, and her opener of Stephen Sondheim’s “Being Alive” is just a hint. Although her diction is often mannered, she adds intimacy to theatricality, focusing and grabbing the lyrics and not letting go, delving into all the niches and crevices of nuance and emotion. She draws out each word in the ballad “I Will Wait for You” (Michel Legrand with English lyrics by Norman Gimbel), driving in the message with range and volume, and she joyfully swings out Duke Ellington/Irving Mills’s “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing).” Special guest of the evening, popular guitarist Sean Harkness, joined her on “Moon River” (Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer) and adds Eric Clapton and Will Jennings’s heartbreaking “Tears from Heaven.”
Her medleys, like the salute to Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, are well constructed and expressive. Acknowledging a special fondness for the music of Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse, she begins with “Who Can I Turn To (When Nobody Needs Me)” and ends with “If I Ruled the World” (Bricusse and Cyril Ornadel).
Julie Budd gives everything she’s got, and she’s got the best—a primo quartet led by longtime musical director/pianist, Herb Bernstein, with Art Weiss on synth and keyboards, bassist John Burr, and Ray Marchica on drums. She generously keeps her musicians in the limelight and mentions the orchestrations are by Bernstein, Peter Moore and Don Sebesky.
Category: Cabaret Reviews, New York City, New York City Cabaret Reviews
