Rachelle Garniez

Farewell Party

Pangea, NYC, January 6, 2023

Reviewed by Bart Greenberg

Rachelle Garniez’s annual Farewell Party returned to Pangea in a new edition. It had a clever and pertinent theme: a salute to those who had passed away in the last year, ranging from Meatloaf to Loretta Lynn to Dame Angela Lansbury. Each person received a song and a specific memory had about each individual celebrity. There was also an “underture,” a lengthy opening medley of theme songs associated with the more recently deceased that ranged from Vangelis to Kirstie Alley. Especially amusing was the theme from Star Trek sung in honor of Nichelle Nichols. Garniez is also a master instrumentalist; she played a half-dozen instruments, including accordion, guitar, piano, and harmonica. This, along with her ability to sing in several registers—seemingly at the same time—was quite dazzling. Unfortunately, given that the show ran for two hours, it resulted in a case of diminishing results.

Garniez is unquestionably very talented. As an instrumentalist, she showed a great deal of dexterity and passion on each of the instruments she played. As a vocalist, she has a uniquely flexible voice capable of high falsetto, a more comfortable soprano range, and controlled raspy baritone notes. However, she tended to rely too much on the tricks she can perform with her voice rather than investing her lyrics with meaning. Her most effective numbers were those presented with simplicity, such as “Goodbye Little Yellow Bird” (for Dame Angela) and a very sensitive “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” (for Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman). She also has a habit of singing her introductions to songs and then speaking the lyrics; this was clever at the start of the show, but ultimately diminished the impact of the songs themselves. One effective bit came when she performed Olivia Newton John’s country song “Please Mr.
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Please” and then later returned to it and incorporating references to Loretta Lynn’s “The Pill.
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” However, she also had a tendency to mock some of the material she chose to include; for example, “People in Your Neighborhood,” which was intended to honor Sesame Street’s Bob McGrath, but it quickly descended into a satire on the show itself with invented lyrics about “cat therapists.”

Throughout the evening Derek Nievergelt on bass and Karen Waltuch on viola delivered great musical support as well as an air of camaraderie that backed up Garniez’s promise that this was a party. Despite some attempts at audience participation, which included a rather odd one involving “Chariots of Fire” and a singalong on “Enjoy Yourself” at opposite ends of the evening, this was still a show. However, the chairs in the room were not designed for people to sit on them for over two hours. Nor did gimmicks and tricks substitute for deep emotions and the exploration of lyrics; the more they were repeated, the less impact they had. Given all her talents, Garniez needs to acquire some editing skills.