Nov. 29--Celebrations of this year's Frank Sinatra centennial have been plentiful, with TV specials, books, exhibitions and concerts honoring the pre-eminent interpreter of American song.
Few events, however, have conveyed quite the glamour of Saturday evening's soiree in the Empire Room of the Palmer House Hilton, a venue that long ago reigned as a Chicago showroom and for one inimitable evening recaptured the old magic. Several of the city's top singers, as well as one unfortunate exception, performed a "Tribute to Frank" in a room that looks every bit as sumptuous as it sounds, the performers taking on highlights of Sinatra's repertoire.
Then, again, practically everything in what's called the Great American Songbook belonged to Sinatra, for he definitively recorded most of the best of it.
Thus it might seem nearly impossible for any Sinatra homage to do full justice to the man's legacy. But the Empire Room event -- to its credit -- didn't attempt to re-create the man's work or tell the story of his life. Instead, the concert's best singers offered deeply personalized versions of songs everyone associates with Sinatra that always, of course, can be reimagined.
No one sounded more dynamic or thoroughly in his element in this music than Johnny Rodgers, a Chicago singer-pianist who somehow can make his case with equal conviction and technical command in pop, jazz, country, blues, you-name-it. Not surprisingly, he proved masterful in various facets of Sinatra's songbook, somehow evoking the spirit of the old master's work without coming close to imitating him.
"The Tender Trap" stands as a more elusive tune than many may realize, its slightly whimsical portrait of urgent romance -- and its consequences -- requiring a singer who can sound earnest and wry at the same time. Rodgers beautifully expressed that duality with the snarl in his voice, the sass in his tone and his playful way of lingering just a bit behind the beat. Sinatra was unrivaled in singing this sly kind of swinger, but Rodgers achieved striking results on his own terms.
It takes a brave soul for any singer to take on "New York, New York," which was not just an anthem for Sinatra but an embodiment of his winner-take-all ethos. Rodgers told the audience that he had accompanied Liza Minnelli in the tune when he toured with her as pianist but now would attempt to sing it publicly for the first time.
He took a faster clip than either Sinatra or Minnelli, leaving glib sentimentality behind and pushing relentlessly toward a series of ascending climaxes. Well done.
Rodgers, however, wasn't the only great male performer in the house. Paul Marinaro grew up immersed in Sinatra's music, and he turned in his strongest work in exploring the most introspective, brooding sides of Sinatra's art. The tenderness Marinaro brought to "I See Your Face Before Me" represented some of the subtlest tone painting and darkest lyric reading Chicago has heard from him.
Then Marinaro wrung meaning from every syllable of "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning," a remarkable evocation of Sinatra's gifts at getting to the subtext of a lyric. This was an understated tour de force for Marinaro, delivered just above a whisper.
Tom Michael and Beckie Menzie, one of the great duos in contemporary cabaret, offered an ingenious and heartfelt twinning of "With a Song in My Heart" and "Without a Song." Harmonizing at some moments, singing canonically at others, they performed with a degree of mutual empathy that only can be achieved with long years of collaboration.
For reasons perhaps only she knows, Joan Curto has been in exceptionally fine voice in recent performances, as she reaffirmed in "They Can't Take That Away From Me," her instrument quite supple and in full bloom. Her vocal lines soared in "Just One of Those Things," though her account of "One For My Baby (And One More for the Road)" sounded too big and brawny for this ballad of late-night confession.
Alas, singer Shelley MacArthur opened the evening with a thud, her wobbly vibrato, superficial interpretations and self-dramatizing excesses demeaning the Sinatra classics she so haphazardly distorted.
Even so, the rest of the event -- which was sold out weeks in advance -- reaffirmed the joy of encountering music of the jazz-pop tradition in the Empire Room. Surely the commercial and artistic success of this evening ought to inspire the venue to push ahead with more. The audience awaits.
Howard Reich is a Tribune critic.
hreich@tribpub.com
