Joyce Breach

April 2, 2010

Metropolitan Room  –  March 23, 26

Joyce Breach has an affinity for old movies and good songs, and she has the taste to choose the prime and avoid the second-rate. In most of her shows she includes tunes that you’ve probably heard once or twice but never had the chance to get to know. They were the film tunes popped in to flavor a plot when it was time for a secondary character to lean against the piano for a special number or when the hero sings to the ingénue. It usually takes an artist with perception and a warm, caressing vocal tone to illuminate the real charm of these songs. Someone like Joyce Breach.

“Life Can Be Beautiful” (Harold Adamson and Jimmy McHugh) was a vocal as well as an instrumental background for the film Smash-Up, and if it is not one for the Great American Songbook records, it has a certain appeal and it was good to hear it again. “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?” by Ted Koehler and Burton Lane was featured in the 1944 musical film, Hollywood Canteen. It never gained the popular appeal of the familiar Alan and Marilyn Bergman/Michel Legrand song, but it has an easy lilting spirit, recalled by Breach’s rendition.

This was Breach’s first cabaret show in several years and she presented a generous, level-paced program with songs that appeal to her. She sings mostly ballads, some with a slight swing, but there are no hard punchy edges, no swinging up-tempo tunes. Two songs I have not heard her perform before were Michael Korie and Scott Frankel’s bittersweet “Will You?” from the musical Grey Gardens, a nostalgic must for her repertoire. In Portuguese she sang “Anos Dourados” by Chico Buarque and Antonio Carlos Jobim.

With subtle, understated skill, Breach phrases the lyrics to allow the song to express its message. She has confident timing and an intimate delivery, and her vocals never get in the way with unnecessary embellishment. Those who have followed her career over the years might run across an interesting song somewhere and think, “That sounds like a Joyce Breach tune.” Her approach is that identifiable.

Smooth and elegant, Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, with his creative elements of jazz, classical, and popular music that make the songs blossom, accompanied Breach on piano. She performed several Bennett songs, including the title of an album they made together in 1987, Lovers After All (Richard Rodney Bennett and Johnny Mandel). There is a smokiness that occasionally infuses her voice, which added a poignant pang into the memories of “Not Exactly Paris,” by Russell George and Michael Leonard. Breach was poignant with “Be Warmer This Winter,” which Franklin Underwood wrote with Stan Freeman, and she did a delightful job on Underwood and Bennett’s “Early to Bed.” Pianist/songwriter Franklin Underwood and Michael Leonard were both in the audience for the show.

For good reason, she was warmly welcomed in this, her first show at The Metropolitan Room. Joyce Breach can always be depended upon to find the heart of the song, and even if you’ve never heard it before, she makes it feel strangely familiar.

 

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