Tierney Sutton
Café Carlyle, NYC, March 19, 2019
Reviewed by Peter Haas for Cabaret Scenes
It was a winning combination: the elegant and intimate Café Carlyle as the setting: a program of two dozen timeless songs featuring lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman; a duo of versatile musicians on the bandstand; and the lovely, literate, and lilting song styling of jazz vocalist Tierney Sutton. It was Sutton’s Café Carlyle debut—an all-Bergman-lyric program with music by a top roster of pop and Hollywood composers.
Accompanied by Mitch Forman on piano and Trey Henry on bass and singing as if each guest in the room were a personal friend, Sutton opened with the Bergman/Dave Grusin “Ev’ry Now and Then,” then moved swiftly into the Michel Legrand/Bergman repertoire. Included were “The Windmills of Your Mind” (the Bergmans’ first song together, Sutton noted); “On My Way to You”; and a smooth medley that included “Summer Me, Winter Me,” “The Summer Knows,” “Little Boy Lost,” and “What Are You Doing The Rest of Your Life?
” On the composer side, Lou Spence was represented by “That Face,” Marvin Hamlisch with “The Way We Were,” Paul Williams by “Make Me Rainbows” and “Moonlight,” and Grusin by “It Might Be You,” from the movie, Tootsie, which was highlighted in the program with a piano solo by Forman.
A Latin interlude featured, a medley of songs the Bergmans wrote with, among others, the Brazilian singer and songwriter, Antonio Carlos Jobim (“Caminhos Cruzados” and “Not So Long Ago”) and Dorival Caymmi (“Like a Lover”).
The warm applause greeting Sutton’s every song offers the hope that she’ll return to the Carlyle before too long.
Lew Spence actually co-wrote the lyrics to “That Face,” although that credit is often overlooked. The line “That face, that face, that wonderful face” is Lew’s and the original song idea was his. Also, the first song the Bergmans wrote together was “Nice ‘n’ Easy.” She was still Marilyn Keith at the time.