Sandy Stewart and Bill Charlap

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Sandy Stewart and Bill Charlap

Birdland Theater, NYC, June 16, 2022

Reviewed by Ron Forman

Sandy Stewart & Bill Charlap

What a marvelous mother-and-son team are the incomparable vocalist Sandy Stewart and the brilliant pianist Bill Charlap. They work wonderfully together. Bassist Peter Washington enhanced their performance. Stewart is a legendary vocalist with a career spanning more than 60 years who possesses a voice and a style as controlled as any in the business. Although she is always seated when she is on stage, her amazing ability to sing slowly and her emotive facial expressions made some of the songs she performed like one-act plays. Her enunciation was perfect; I heard every lyric. Charlap is one of today’s best jazz pianists and he always is perfectly in synch with his mom. He was dazzling in his musical numbers with Washington.

Charlap and Washington opened the show with a very slow performance of “Yesterdays” (Jerome Kern/Otto Harbach). Stewart came on stage, sat down, and performed a soft and slow “A Sleepin’ Bee” that showcased her still beautiful sound. She swung softly through “I Thought About You” which featured a solo by Charlap. The original lyric to “How About You?” was “Franklin Roosevelt’s looks give me a thrill.” Frank Sinatra substituted James Durante for FDR. Stewart got a big laugh by substituting William Charlap for FDR as she gazed at her son. She included the verse of “It Might as Well Be Spring,” which also featured a lovely solo turn by Washington. She induced a lot of laughter with her very funny performance of the verse to the Gershwins’ “Looking for a Boy.” Stewart took a break, allowing Charlap and Wahington to perform a very beautiful “All the Things You Are,” followed by Charlap’s fingers doing the dancing to a very jazzy “You’re All the World to Me,” the song Fred Astaire danced to on the walls and ceiling in Royal Wedding.

Sinatra once remarked that Cole Porter’s “Just One of Those Things” was the saddest song he sang. Stewart returned to the stage, and her facial expressions and the very slow manner in which she and Charlap performed the song emphasized its sadness. She lightly swung “Isn’t It a Lovely Day,” which was followed by her next-to-closing number, “Somebody Loves Me,” during which she flashed a very big smile. She closed the show with what she said was her favorite Porter song, “After You, Who?,” with Charlap’s bold piano working nicely with her soft, slow vocal as they built to a big finish.

Ron Forman

Ron Forman has been a Mathematics Professor at Kingsborough Community College for 45 years. In that time, he has managed to branch out in many different areas. From 1977 to 1994 he was co-owner of Comics Unlimited, the third largest comic book distribution company in the USA. In 1999,after a lifetime of secretly wanting to do a radio program, he began his weekly Sweet Sounds program on WKRB 90.3 FM, dedicated to keeping the music of the Great American Songbook alive and accessible. This introduced him to the world of cabaret, which led to his position as a reviewer for Cabaret Scenes.