Review: REBEL WITH A CAUSE Is a Triumphant Tribute to Nina Simone at 92NY

This week, I was rewardingly reminded of the towering talents and strong personalities of two formidable female performers: the legendary Nina Simone (1933-2003) and Amber Iman, who’d portrayed her in the stage piece by the name of Soul Doctor: The Journey of a Rock-Star Rabbi and is the mesmerizing artist singing from Simone’s varied repertoire and talking about her life and times at The 92nd Street Y, New York.  This dynamic December entry in the venue’s decades-long Lyrics and Lyricists series, titled Rebel with a Cause: The Artistry and Activism of Nina Simone, put the spotlight on the legendary artist – who didn’t take the easy way out or suffer fools gladly, offering some songs as social protests against prejudice and injustice – and her well-  informed admirer and kindred spirit, Amber Iman, is herself a fierce force of nature. And the two women have some autobiographical elements in common: both being black women raised in the South (who came to New York State), getting involved in music through the church, having piano-playing skills and hypnotic voices, focused on social activism and gathering accolades. The anecdotes and analysis offered were worthy and not too wordy.      

On Sunday afternoon, I attended the middle of three consecutive performance dates (December 7-9, 2024) at 92NY.  I entered the Reggie D. White-directed proceedings as a dyed-in-the-wool Nina Simone fan; I remember the sound of one favored album among my parents’ record collection frequently wafting through the house when I was a mere pre-schooler. I was already hooked.  And I was “re-hooked” as I grew up and dug deeper and yet again, decades later, when I went to a concert at The Town Hall where the singer’s daughter, Lisa — who went by the single name of Simone and accompanied by some of the same musicians — recreated a set (preserved on an album) that her mother had performed there. 

Flash forward to this week with Amber Iman and company’s often riveting and rapturously received revisit, and I was enchanted and engaged again.  The legacy is in caring custody, despite the fact that Miss Iman’s tone is not a clone of the low Nina Simone voice that had often suggested melancholy, a world-weary seriousness and even pain with the rather unique “moan of Simone.” Of course, not everything was gloom and doom.  The included feel-good number “Feeling Good” from the score of the musical The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd is a kind of rouser about prizing freedom.  

Michael O. Mitchell was the pianist, arranger, orchestrator, and musical director of the band that included half a dozen other players. They began the program with an on-fire rendition of “African Mailman,” a piece written by Nina Simone as an instrumental. Truer to the umbrella title Lyrics and Lyricists, the set included a few notable “Nina numbers” for which she wrote or co-wrote the words, too: items which became signature songs for her. Indelible in its power and punch among these is “Mississippi Goddam” a scorcher written in 45 minutes, channeling her reactions of rage and despair following racially-motivated horrors in the headlines.  But Nina Simone certainly gravitated to gravitas-filled lyrics written by others, investing them with passion. Amber Iman followed suit, as the choices from dozens of Simone repertoire possibilities featured articulate, artful, emotion-embracing language, delivered with passion, with vulnerability and/or steely survivor mode on display.  The variety among the selections highlighted Nina Simone’s myriad of musical influences and the many musical genres dipped into by the woman who’d sought out to be a classical pianist.  (She only started singing, reluctantly, because it was demanded of her in her young days, a key step to keep her job.)

Amber Iman, whose majestic and magnetic presence and vocal “wow” factor knocked me out earlier this year in a major way via her major role on Broadway in the short-lived Lempicka, is someone I was more than eager to catch again.  And I was not disappointed.  I was particularly moved, though, by her striking sound and musical mastery in songs that started off a capella.  Had the set included the title song of one of Nina’s albums, I Put a Spell on You, those words would have seemed redundant!  But the captivating performer on the 92NY stage cast a spell with what was selected, scoring with folk songs, spirituals, laments, and more.  

Adding to the vocal richness for harmonies and occasional solo lines, on some songs, were Tiffany Mann and Inès Nassara. The talented two were especially effective on “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.” And certainly Amber Iman held the audience in the palm of her hand, firmly holding the torch that you might say has been passed to her, up to the challenge of handling (with care) the intense and involving material, ending with the Simone original stating “I Sing Just to Know I’m Alive.” The fact-filled script by Jocelyn Bioh revealed that music was a kind of salvation in gifted Nina Simone’s non-fairy tale life, two less than idyllic marriages and other challenges to happiness and smooth roads.

Rebel with a Cause was cause for applause — and it got (and deserved) lots of that.

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To see other events at the venue, see www.92ny.org

Photo credit: Richard Termine

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