Tom Wopat is currently appearing in his first dramatic role on Broadway, as the hapless customer in
Glengarry Glen Ross, but he's maintaining a full schedule of musical performances too. On Sunday evening, he headlined a concert in the Zipper Theater's Unzipped series (which continues through June 26), concluding a week in which he also sang in Bryant Park, as part of Broadway Under the Stars, and at the White House, for a concert to be broadcast later this year on PBS.
For the Father's Day concert at the Zipper, Wopat saluted some of the granddaddies of American song, including Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin and Cole Porter. At the top of the show he sang three of Berlin's numbers from Annie Get Your Gun, which he had sung as Frank Butler in the recent revival—"There's No Business Like Show Business," "They Say It's Wonderful" and "My Defenses Are Down." But it was Arlen who was feted most by Wopat, with "My Shining Hour," "That Old Black Magic," "If I Only Had a Brain," "Last Night When We Were Young," "One for My Baby" and "Over the Rainbow." All those songs are featured on the album Tom Wopat Sings Harold Arlen: Dissertation on the State of Bliss, which was released in February of this year (the centennial of Arlen's birth).
Wopat shared the stage with four top-notch musicians—Tedd Firth on piano, David Finck on bass, Bob Malach on saxophone and Peter Grant on drums—and turned over the spotlight to them during several songs. The Billie Holiday number "What a Little Moonlight Will Do," in particular, gave them each extended solos. Wopat will perform with the band again at Birdland on August 1.
After having fun with "Makin' Whoopee," Wopat—who participated in Voices for Change, the Broadway community's anti-Bush concerts last year—joked about that song being disallowed at his White House performance earlier in the week. Wopat dedicated "If These Walls Could Speak" (one of two Jimmy Webb songs on the bill) to his late father, who was a dairy farmer, head of the local school board and father of eight. Another presence from Wopat's Wisconsin childhood: his high school principal was at the concert. Wopat concluded the show with "For All We Know," which he had recorded for his first album of standards, The Still of the Night, in 2000 but which took on a whole new meaning, he said, after 9/11 ("For all we know we may never meet again…").
Tom sang two selections from West Side Story ("Something's Coming" and "Cool"), which he said he was last in when he was 21.
Pianist Tedd Firth also did several of the arrangements.
Tom's Glengarry Glen Ross castmates Gordon Clapp and Jordan Lage were in the audience.
Tom gave some of his Broadway tunes, like "42nd Street," a jazzy edge.
Earlier this year Tom took his Arlen tribute on tour, to 33 cities in six weeks.
The outstanding band that backed Wopat: pianist Firth, bass player Finck, Malach on sax and drummer Grant.
"I'm Tom Wopat. If you didn't like the show, I'm John Schneider,"
the erstwhile Duke of Hazzard said at the end.
