Richard Holbrook: Richard Sings Rodgers with a Lot of Heart

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Richard Holbrook

Richard Sings Rodgers with a Lot of Heart

Metropolitan Room, NYC, March 14, 2016

Reviewed by Peter Haas for Cabaret Scenes

Photo: Jeffrey Hornstein
Photo: Jeffrey Hornstein

Richard Rodgers had a long, prolific career as a composer, creating the music for more than 900 popular songs and over 40 Broadway, film and television productions. Rodgers’ collaborations with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II were explored by Richard Holbrook in a comprehensive and charming cabaret tribute, presented to a full house at the Metropolitan Room.  

Holbrook, in fine voice and dapper in black tie, delivered a strong show of some 30 songs, weaving them together with a well-researched recap of Rodgers’ career. When Rodgers was writing with Hart, Holbrook pointed out, the music came first, the lyrics second.

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From their early musical comedy success, A Connecticut Yankee, Holbrook offered the still popular “My Heart Stood Still,” while other hits included “Isn’t It Romantic?,” “Mimi” (which Holbrook sang delightfully in the style of Maurice Chevalier), and such other Rodgers and Hart classics as “It’s Easy to Remember” (written for Bing Crosby), “Johnny One Note,” “Have You Met Miss Jones?

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” and “Lover.”

Rodgers then teamed with Oscar Hammerstein II, creating the scores—lyrics first—for such ground-breaking shows as Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific and, written while Hammerstein was in failing health, The Sound of Music. It contained the last song they created together, “Edelweiss.”

Following a bow to another of Rodgers’ collaborators, Stephen Sondheim (“Do I Hear a Waltz?”), Holbrook, removing his tie, enacted the part of Carousel’s Billy Bigelow to close the show with a strongly sung “Soliloquy.”

Top-flight musical support was delivered throughout by the smooth Tom Nelson Trio, headed by Nelson on piano, with Tom Kirschmer on bass and Peter Grant on drums.

Peter Haas

Writer, editor, lyricist and banjo plunker, Peter Haas has been contributing features and performance reviews for Cabaret Scenes since the magazine’s infancy. As a young folk-singer, he co-starred on Channel 13’s first children’s series, Once Upon a Day; wrote scripts, lyrics and performed on Pickwick Records’ children’s albums, and co-starred on the folk album, All Day Singing. In a corporate career, Peter managed editorial functions for CBS Records and McGraw-Hill, and today writes for a stable of business magazines. An ASCAP Award-winning lyricist, his work has been performed at Carnegie Hall, Feinstein’s, Metropolitan Room and other fine saloons.