Jeanne MacDonald: Heart & Soul

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Jeanne MacDonald

Heart & Soul

Chelsea Table + Stage, NYC, November 3, 2023

Reviewed by Bart Greenberg

Jeanne MacDonald

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.

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Bart Greenberg

Bart Greenberg first discovered cabaret a few weeks after arriving in New York City by seeing Julie Wilson and William Roy performing Stephen Sondheim and Cole Porter outdoors at Rockefeller Center. It was instant love for both Ms. Wilson and the art form. Some years later, he was given the opportunity to create his own series of cabaret shows while working at Tower Records. "Any Wednesday" was born, a weekly half-hour performance by a singer promoting a new CD release. Ann Hampton Callaway launched the series. When Tower shut down, Bart was lucky to move the program across the street to Barnes & Nobel, where it thrived under the generous support of the company. The series received both The MAC Board of Directors Award and The Bistro Award. Some of the performers who took part in "Any Wednesday" include Barbara Fasano and Eric Comstock, Tony Desare, Andrea Marcovicci, Carole Bufford, the Karens, Akers, Mason and Oberlin, and Julie Wilson. Privately, Greenberg is happily married to writer/photographer Mark Wallis, who as a performance artist in his native England gathered a major following as "I Am Cereal Killer."