“Stiing, Stang, Stung!”

Metropolitan Room  –  February 6, 8, 21, 26

In her show devoted to the songs of Sting, Rosemary Loar advances the view that Sting is the Cole Porter of our generation because, like Porter, he is not afraid to write intelligent lyrics—or lyrics that are simple, profound, and universal. For the rest of the show, she makes a persuasive case for her thesis: the songs are extremely well crafted and display the very qualities she alleges. She tells us further that she was attracted to Sting’s music the first time she heard it because it was not just pop, but also had rock and jazz elements, and it was theatrical. True again. And the very good news is that thanks to Loar’s considerable skill as a singer/actress, and in no small measure thanks also to a treasure-trove of creative, varied, frequently jazz-flavored arrangements, the evening pays Sting the lyricist and Sting the composer all due honor.

The selection that probably bears the most direct comparison to Cole Porter’s work is a pairing of “Roxannne” and “Tomorrow We’ll See.” Its subject is a streetwalker, and like Porter’s “Love for Sale,” its attitude is non-judgmental. Indeed, it is even more sympathetic than the earlier piece, but no less hard-hitting—and having been written so many decades later, it is more raw, more explicit. Like its predecessor, it is strong and striking—as is Loar’s performance.

A pairing of “Every Breath You Take,” that quintessential song of obsession, and its antipode, “If You Love Somebody, Set Them Free,” is a good example of the show’s strengths. Loar’s interpretation of the first song is not as dramatic as one may be used to, but it is intense and focused, and its expression of dependence is more prominent than normal. In the second, she is clearly working to sell herself on the song’s counsel—until the end, when she finally accepts and embraces it. The arrangement, singing, and acting are all of a piece, an integrated whole.

And so it goes, song after song: “Brand New Day,” with an insistent rhythm and a forceful vocal interpretation; a cool-jazz-with-scat presentation of “Englishman in New York,” making him a very hip Englishman, indeed; “He’s Too Good for Me,” about a mismatched relationship that has its compensations, with an arrangement that alternates between jaunty and serious; “Never Coming Home,” a dramatic arrangement and vocal rendition of a song about escape, as well acted as it is sung.

Loar is fully immersed—and, therefore, so are we—in “Mad About You,” a single-minded expression of all-consuming passion, here underscored by a Latin rhythm [see additional comments, below], and in her encore, the lovely “Fields of Gold,” she clearly savors the remembered images.

The extraordinary arrangements are, variously, by musical director Frank Ponzio, Daryl Kojak, John DiPinto, and Rosemary Loar—severally and in collaboration. The instrumentalists are: Frank Ponzio, a wizard on the piano; the always-fine Tom Hubbard on bass, and the excellent Vito Lesczak on drums.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Additional comments

The arrangement of “Mad About You” includes a single refrain of Noël Coward’s “Mad About the Boy” inserted part-way through the song. Now, that’s not an inappropriate song to choose, since it, too, deals with being fixated on one person. However, does it add anything? Nope. Does it illuminate the main song? Nope. Would the meaning of “Mad About You” have been unclear without this augmentation? Nope. Though the insertion is skillful, it takes us out of the primary song and make us aware of a different piece. (If “Mad About the Boy” hadn’t been so very familiar, we might not have identified it as a foreign object—but such is not the case.)

There is an increasing tendency among arrangers—even very good ones—to tinker with songs, combining bits and pieces from other compositions at will—or, more often, at whim. As I’ve stated repeatedly, songs should be respected.

I’ve written expansively on the more general subject of medleys. Following is what I had to say about this in my commentaries on the MAC web site, www.macnyc.com.

On Medleys

 Let me open with a rather broadly stated observation: Too many people are doing too many medleys in too many shows. Now I’ll narrow in and expand on this. [Perversely, and yet delightfully, this oxymoronic last sentence is not self-contradictory.]

By medley, I refer to any combination of more than one song. Let’s start at the numerically low end: a pairing of two songs. This comes in a few flavors. The tastiest—i.e., most satisfying to the audience—is a performance of two complete, or nearly complete, songs in which one segues to the other without an applause break. The first song not only delivers its own message and rewards, it also establishes a context for the second, imbuing it with a subtext that enables the listener to hear the song in a particular, and perhaps new, light, thereby enjoying a richer experience. By not significantly truncating the songs, each can be given its full due, and the combination can pack a greater wallop than if the songs had been performed separately.

Obviously, the songs must be carefully chosen if these benefits are to be realized. (Some years ago, one hapless singer paired Amanda McBroom’s “Ship in a Bottle” with Christopher Cross’s “Sailing”—apparently believing they shared a nautical theme.) Further, while a combination may offer the potential for a synergistic relationship, your interpretation must deliver on that potential. In a recent Dorothy Fields show, another singer did a medley of “You Should See Yourself,” “The Way You Look Tonight,” and “Lovely to Look At.” Unfortunately, she did nothing to relate the songs in any substantive way, leaving us to wonder why she combined them, and to conclude that they all involved the sense of sight—a far-too-superficial link. But take care. Even when songs are well combined and your interpretations masterful, if you do too many pairings in your show, this approach will become tired and predictable, and its effectiveness will diminish.

Another two-song variant is a combination of the verse of one song and the body of a second. The first time I heard this approach, I was taken by its inventiveness. But that was many, many, many years ago. Now this is done so often it has become rather a cliché. Other overdone two-song models include doing a little more than the verse of one song followed by a second song, and doing a portion of one song followed by a portion of another. What is more, many of the two-song models have three-song counterparts. (See my comments on shortened versions three paragraphs down.)

An increasingly popular device entails combining refrains, choruses, or other extracts of two songs to create a quasi-new entity. While musical directors are frequently extremely skillful at constructing these collages, and though I have witnessed a few such compositions that made dramatically strong statements, more often than not the mongrel is not as compelling as the original two purebreds.

There are factors beyond simply not working very well that argue against mixing different sources—or at least should induce you to seriously reconsider doing so. Songs are the product of writers, who have devoted a lot of talent and effort in creating them; they are not natural resources, to be extracted and molded to meet our needs. Taking such liberties with them smacks of presumption. It is especially disrespectful and hubristic when the arrangement deprives one of the songs of its melody and unique quality, as is often the case. Performing a song as written affords ample latitude for singers to put their individual stamps on them. (I am excluding from this discussion such legitimate stylizations as jazz, in which liberties are taken with the music and meter, but in which the original lyrics should be honored, and variations imposed at the very end of an arrangement.)

Further, singing only portions of songs can be a bit of a cop-out. By mixing extracts of two songs, singers sometimes attempt to use the combination to give the proceedings interest, rather than accepting the challenge of making their interpretation deep and rich. It is relatively easy to perform a couple of refrains and a chorus of a song and do a pretty good job of it. It is far more difficult to interpret an entire song and hold the audience’s interest throughout. What is more, good songwriters generally know what they are doing: songs have however many refrains and choruses they have because that is what it takes to make their point and have emotional impact. And even when a writer concludes a song by merely repeating a refrain and/or chorus, it is the singer’s responsibility not to repeat his/her prior reading of it, but, rather, to convey an emotional state or point of view that advances the interpretation. As a general rule, the shorter the extract, the less weight and impact your rendition will have.

Finally, we get to traditional medleys—strings of relatively brief extracts of several, or many, songs—perhaps as a survey of a particular songwriter’s work, perhaps songs with a common theme, etc. As we have all seen, these can be quite wonderful. For medleys of serious songs, guard against making the extracts too brief or the medley will almost certainly not work on an emotional level; however, comic medleys can often withstand or even thrive on this approach. Whether serious or comic, do not include more than one or two medleys in your show; the law of diminishing returns applies to traditional medleys as well. What’s more, a terrific song performed authoritatively will trump a medley seven times out of ten. (I recognize that there are shows or unique situations in which an abundance of medleys can be used to good effect as part of a broader theme or agenda.)