Jeanne MacDonald
Heart & Soul
Chelsea Table + Stage, NYC, November 3, 2023
Reviewed by Bart Greenberg

Jeanne MacDonald hasn’t sung in a New York club in over 15 years. Happily, that pause hasn’t affected either her voice or her delivery. She possesses a beautiful instrument that’s imbued with a natural warmth and wit that makes her wide-ranging choices of material (over 91 years of song) a joy. With support provided by her excellent music director Tracy Stark at the piano, MacDonald gave us an admirable evening. Her voice has a straightforward, unfussy quality that allowed the emotions of the numbers to be presented with full impact. Such songs as “Summer, Highland Falls” (Billy Joel) and “At the Same Time” (Ann Hampton Callaway) gave the performer an opportunity to display her impressive acting ability.
The songlist was varied and offered a constant surprise. A “Blue Skies” (the earliest song of the evening) inspired a wonderful piano solo by Stark. Nina Simone’s “Do I Move You?” evoked the very sensuous side of the singer. A revised version of “Heart and Soul,” with an adapted melody by Rick Jensen was hypnotically romantic, and the wryly humorous “Career Counseling 101 (Don’t)” (Susan Werner) brought out her warmth. Later, she charmingly made reference to the Osmonds with a rock number (“Fix You” by Coldplay) and a country song (“Wandering Roads” by Rhiannon Giddens/Dirk Powell). Rounding out a quartet of gems, there was a joyous “You’re Aging Well” (Dar Williams) and a very bluesy “Feeling Good.”
Her show had no central theme and no dramatic arch, which can easily spell disaster. However, MacDonald mostly avoided the pitfalls of such a show through her careful balance of material and, of course, her personality. She even managed to bring the show to an emotionally satisfying end, first with her final heartfelt number, “What a Wonderful World,” and then with two encores that truly encapsulated the whole evening in their personalities. These included a jaunty, obscure song by veteran songsmiths Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler, “Get Yourself a New Broom,” followed by a cabaret classic, Stephen Schwartz’s “Meadowlark,” which was filled with passion and powerful singing. Jeanne MacDonald, please don’t stay away so long again.