Lisa Kantor
Do Nothin’ Til You Hear from Me
Club Café’s Napoleon Room, Boston, MA, October 27, 2024
Reviewed by John Amodeo
For a solid hour, Lisa Kantor took us on a sentimental journey with her show Do Nothin’ Til You Hear from Me, her celebration of the golden era of night clubs. She swung, crooned, and balladeered her way through the Great American Songbook as if born to it. Throughout, she shared insights about those great girl singers who fronted big bands in smoky night clubs during that golden era. This is a genre in which Kantor is completely at home. Her relaxed and comfortable on-stage presence enabled us to just sit back and luxuriate in her silky alto and soft vibrato and her occasional well-placed jazz inflections that shimmered.
With deft direction by Lina Koutrakos, the show had a lovely arc and captivating song selections. In beautiful rest stops along the way, Kantor gave us snippets of the musical history about such stars as Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Peggy Lee, and so many others. But rather than simply listing biographical factoids, Kantor was far more compelling by being autobiographical and sharing her insights into the lives and careers of these hard-working girl singers through her eyes and her life experience. In these moments, we learned why these women were so influential for her and why they deserve our attention.
And speaking of attention, Kantor had ours from “Hello,” smiling radiantly as she entered wearing an elegant black evening gown with sparkling red shoes. She then added her own sparkle by opening the show with a clever arrangement of Cole Porter’s “All of You” paired with “All of Me” (Gerald Marks/Seymour Simons), which kept things peppy with a buoyant arrangement provided by musical director/pianist Tom LaMark and acoustic bassist Dave Landoni, who really knows how to walk a bass line.
Kantor’s engaging patter was well matched to her material. She filled us in on the 1940s girl singers we often think of as having lived a life of glamor when in fact they had very humble beginnings. This segued seamlessly into Alan Rankin Jones’ “Easy Street.” She let the song tell the story, and honored these women with the authentic sound of the period in a way that would have made them proud.
We saw many sides of Kantor in this show. There was the sultry Kantor in the Gershwins’ “’S Wonderful,” where Landoni’s slow walking-bass solo in the first eight bars set up Kantor’s very sensual, sexually charged delivery. She waxed expressive in the torchy “Angel Eyes” (Matt Dennis/Earl K. Brent) and pierced our hearts with the final line, “excuse me while I disappear.” But she turned on a dime with her mischievous quip, “Now, revenge!” and launched into a withering “Goody, Goody!” (Matt Malneck/Johnny Mercer). This was the hilarious highlight of the show. She made her performance musically and emotionally richer with some great jazz blue notes and well-placed growls.
“I Don’t Know Enough About You” (Peggy Lee & Dave Barbour), a familiar jazz standard, showcased Kantor’s more subtle approach to humor when she winked through the line “I know about psychology,” which drew laughs from the cognoscenti in the crowd who knew Kantor was a licensed clinical psychologist by day. Her slow, contemplative, heartfelt “The Very Thought of You” (Ray Noble) and her heartbreaking “In My Solitude” (Duke Ellington/Eddie DeLange & Irving Mills) showed how skilled she can be with a ballad. She balanced pathos with celebration when she remarked, “Music has the power to transport, a portal to deep pain and pure joy.” She gave us the “pure joy” in the peppy “Things are Swinging All the Time” (Peggy Lee) and the triumphant “From This Moment On” (Porter), as well as her title song, “Do Nothing Till You Hear from Me” (Ellington/Bob Russell). She finished with the Billie Holiday favorite “Did I Remember” (Harold Adamson/Walter Donaldson) a gem we don’t hear nearly enough, that evoked the dignified offerings of Irene Krall, Carol Sloane, and Lady Day herself.
Kantor couldn’t have been in better hands for this show than with LaMark, who made the piano sound like an orchestra, has his own big band, and is one of Boston’s leading arrangers for big-band and swing-era music. While the intimate Napoleon Room couldn’t possibly accommodate a big band, having Landoni on hand playing his bass deftly to add rhythm, mood, and color allowed us to imagine how these songs might have sounded with a big band. LaMark and Landoni really went to town on “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby” (Louis Jordan & Billy Austin); they backed up Kantor’s bluesy vocals with a sizzling musical arrangement that included a sultry bowed bass solo and their own call-and-response backup vocals that brought us right back to the big band era.
Kantor’s celebratory encore “I’m Gonna Live Till I Die” (Al Hoffman/Walter Kent/Mann Curtis) took no prisoners, proved that her journey was well worth taking, and whetted our appetites for her next show.
