Melinda's Board: Yet another article

Date: 02/8/02 09:50:10 AM
Name: Cindy
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Subject: Yet another article
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This is from Playbill Online:
DIVA TALK: The Songs of Bernadette
08-FEB-2002
BERNADETTE PETERS
There are good singers, and there are great singers. In fact, there are many good singers. Walk into most any cabaret in the city, and you’ll hear plenty of good, strong voices. That said, I would argue that there are precious few great singers. What distinguishes one from another? I’m not sure it’s something that can be put into words, but you certainly know a great singer when you hear one. Into the second category, Bernadette Peters most certainly falls. Listen to the way she breathes new life into the 13 songs that compose her newest album, Bernadette Peters Loves Rodgers & Hammerstein. Peters does not act a song -- she embodies it -- and the result is always entrancing.

The CD’s first track, “It’s a Grand Night for Singing,” is the perfect opener, for the recording is filled with an overflow of grand singing and superlative arrangements by the legendary Jonathan Tunick. Peters spreads her creamy, sometimes smoky, and always emotion-filled tones among some of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s best-known works as well as lesser-known gems like the beautifully optimistic “So Far” from Allegro. The two-time Tony winner manages to find both the charm and longing in State Fair’s “It Might As Well Be Spring,” and her version of Oklahoma!’s “Out of My Dreams” is equally heartfelt. Other highlights include a marvelously nuanced reading of “Mister Snow”; a spirited, jovial version of “There Is Nothin’ Like a Dame”; and a belty, uplifting version of the Carousel anthem, “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”

I’ve been a BP fan since high school, but when I listened to her newest recording, I fell for her all over again. To borrow a title from another of the disc’s gems, Bernadette Peters Loves Rodgers & Hammerstein is, simply, “Something Wonderful.” (Co-produced by Richard Jay-Alexander and Jonathan Tunick, the CD will hit record stores on March 12 on the Angel Records label.)

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