Judy Carmichael
The Gaslight Theater, St. Louis, MO, November 11, 2016
Reviewed by Chuck Lavazzi for Cabaret Scenes
As Al Jolson once sang to Jimmy Durante, “It’s a thrill when a real piano player sits down at the keys.” At The Gaslight Cabaret Festival, singer, songwriter, Sirius/SM radio host, and stride pianist extraordinaire Judy Carmichael showed that ol’ Joley knew what he was talking about.
Because, make no mistake, Carmichael is a real piano player.
She’s got the powerful left hand you need for that strong octave/chord alternation that characterizes the bass line of the stride style along with a nimble right for all the flashy stuff. She dove into the long instrumental jams with her performing partner, guitarist Chris Flory, with a cheerful gusto that was positively infectious. Even her one blues number—”Boisdale Blues,” a Carmichael original—was accurately billed as a “very happy blues” that takes its title from a London restaurant chain where she likes to play.
In fact, if this show was about anything it was about the joy of making music. You could see it in the little verbal asides between her and Flory and you could absolutely hear it in the endless invention and unflagging virtuosity of her keyboard style. Like so many of the great pianists, Carmichael treated those 88 keys as simple extensions of her fingers; a thought became music with the speed of neural transmission.
She is also a witty songwriter, as evidence by original numbers like the “Take Me Back to Machu Picchu” (“Where have you gone, my love hypnotic?/Remember when you weren’t neurotic?”) and “My Manhattan.” She wrote the latter when she first moved from California to the Big Apple of which, as she reminded us, its former mayor, Ed Koch, once said, “If you’re one in a million, there are ten of you in New York.
” Her lyrics and the music of her composing partner, Harry Allen, combine to create the kind of hip “jazz patter” numbers I associate with Lambert, Hendricks and Ross.
There were more quiet numbers in the show, of course, including a sensitive performance of the too-rarely-heard “The Lamp Is Low,” with Mitchell Parish’s lyrics grafted on to Ravel’s serene “Pavane pour une infante défunte.” But, for the most part, this was an evening that brought smiles of pleasure and frequent applause for the virtuosity on display.
