Betty Buckley Kicks Off Hanover Theatre's First Full Season

Betty Buckley Kicks Off Hanover Theatre's First Full Season

 

With her quartet: Kenny Werner, piano; Tony Marino, bass; Billy Drewes, reeds; Anthony Pinciotti, drums

The Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts in Worcester launches its first full season on Saturday, September 20^th, with a bona fide Broadway Baby, Tony Award-winner Betty Buckley in concert with her quartet. Headed by long-time collaborator, renowned jazz pianist Kenny Werner, they will be joined by Tony Marino on bass, Billy Drewes on reeds, and drummer Anthony Pinciotti in a program featuring selections from Ms. Buckley's two recent CD releases, as well as songs she is known for from the Great White Way. The Hanover's 2008-2009 calendar will feature touring productions of Movin' Out, Cats, Annie, and Chicago, as well as an eclectic mix of music, comedy, dance, and special attractions for the whole family

Betty Buckley's career spans four decades beginning in Texas where she made her professional stage debut at the age of 15 in Gypsy. As a runner-up to Miss Texas, her involvement with the Miss America Pageant gave her the opportunity to tour Asia in 1968 before starting as a writer for her hometown Fort Worth Press until she pursued her muse to New York City. In January, 1969 she auditioned for 1776 and made her Broadway debut in the role of Martha Jefferson. The following year she was cast as the lead in Promises, Promises in London, and went back across the pond to star in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard in 1994. However, Ms. Buckley's most legendary stage appearance was as Grizabella in ALW's Cats for which she won the 1983 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. More success in Broadway shows, film, and television followed, including the mom, Abby Bradford on Eight is Enough.

As she prepared for her fall concert tour, I spoke with Ms. Buckley on the phone from her ranch outside of Fort Worth, Texas. I wondered how the concert in Worcester came about. "My friend Christina Andrianopoulos has a radio show (Dining Out Metrowest on WCRN-AM) and an online business service. She lives in that area and had contacted me saying they were opening this new theatre and she was really pushing the director of the series to book me in concert there. So he and I spoke and he said they'd like to have me come September 20^th." She added, "I'm coming with my quartet. I'll be doing some songs from Quintessence and also some from the 1967 album, and of course some songs from Broadway that people associate me with, fortunately for me."

Ms. Buckley has one major signature song, Memory from Cats, which begs the question if she ever tires of it. "I really don't. Grizabella feels like one of my oldest friends and soul companions; she's also been one of my great teachers through the years because every time I sing my song it's like visiting with her anew and she's always teaching me some new thing. I kind of grow and change and she makes me aware of new things. It's a beautiful song with some really divine lyrics and pretty, pretty music," she said emphatically. When asked to characterize her concert repertoire and her own style, Ms. Buckley explained, "I think of myself as a storyteller and I've been fortunate to be associated with Broadway, but my great love has been jazz musicians my whole life. I think of myself as a jazz artist. My point of view from within myself is always spontaneous...but I don't technically stand up there and sing scat like a jazz singer does."

Quintessence with Kenny Werner is Ms. Buckley's ninth album with him and second collaboration with Playbill Records. On this tribute to the musical pairing of nearly 19 years, the label coos that it "oozes with the seasoned finesse of a musical virtuoso." At least 90% of the selections would be familiar to most people with some background in Standards and Broadway tunes, yet they don't sound familiar. The artist concurs, "So Many Stars is a real pretty song. Kenny did a really magical arrangement of that and I like the motion and the excitement of the music. I like the version we do of Get Here...I really like our arrangement of Something's Coming. I like the Brazilian tunes (Dindi/How Insensitive)...Surrey With the Fringe On Top is really funny. This is definitely a jazz recording," she affirmed, and expressed her gratitude for the longevity of her treasured relationship with Werner.

Ms. Buckley's other recent release Betty Buckley 1967 features the then 19-year old in her first studio recording. Playbill describes her "young abandon and whimsical charisma" on 11 tracks, including Quando Calienta El Sol, They Can't Take That Away From Me, My Funny Valentine, and When I Fall in Love. In a nostalgic nod to the past, a limited number of copies were pressed on vinyl in order to give her the album she never had as a kid. But, does she still have a record player? "Yes, I do actually," she laughed. She also reflected on her reaction to hearing her two voices juxtaposed. "Well, it took me a while to feel comfortable with the '67 recording. I was very critical of myself as a young singer. I wanted to be one of the great lady singers...and I sounded like a little soprano, so girlish and so pure, and that was always, in my mind, a fault. Then I didn't listen to it again all these years." After the Playbill folks loved it and broached the idea of a tandem release, "I couldn't understand why they loved it, so I listened to it and was kind of embarrassed by it. Then one night I sat down with my mother, who was responsible for a lot of the song choices back then, and listened to it with her - the final mixed recording - and I suddenly heard it differently through her ears. I suddenly heard all these things that I could do that were unique to me at 19 and I heard this kind of abandon in the way I did things, this purity and this passion. And I just suddenly had a new appreciation for my younger self. It was a very nice experience for me, actually, and a kind of reclaiming of that younger self."

After Ms. Buckley opens the Hanover fall season, she appears at Birdland Jazz Club in New York City for two shows nightly, September 23-27, with Clifford Carter as her pianist, and Marino, Drewes, and Pinciotti completing the quartet. Werner and Buckley will do some duet gigs and are scheduled for October 3-4 at the Kennedy Center and a benefit evening on October 10 with Doug Varone and Dancers at the Hudson Theatre in NYC. "It's going to be really exciting because we're going to be doing some improvisational music with the company, so that'll be cool," she chirps.

The singer spends a considerable amount of time in New York, even since moving to her Texas ranch four and a half years ago. "Thankfully, because when I first moved I was really concerned about being away from New York because, in my heart of hearts, I've always been a New Yorker, despite the fact that I grew up in Texas. I've lived in New York longer than I lived in Texas. I moved there when I was 21, but fortunately my work has taken me back there for several weeks every year." When I asked if she'd like to return to Broadway, she replied, "I actually would. There was an opportunity that came up earlier in the year and I was so excited about it. It didn't work out and I was really disappointed. I guess the timing wasn't right. I'm now thinking about some projects and having some possible meetings when I come to New York for Birdland, to discuss some different ideas and to develop some things. Yeah, I love the Broadway musical theatre, it's one of my great loves, and I would love to find a venture that is thrilling."

Although Ms. Buckley relocated to Texas in 2003, she has brought quite a bit of Broadway influence with her. She teaches master classes in song interpretation at Casa Mañana in Fort Worth where she first started performing. She said, "I love teaching. I've got a group of students that have been studying with me for a while now and I think we're going to be putting together an evening concert of their work sometime in November when I get back. I'm so happy for all that they've accomplished so far. I like to assign songs that I can't particularly sing, but that are right for their voices... I help direct and guide them through that. I get kind of a vicarious thrill out of it as though I were learning it myself and that's always fun for me. Everything good that I know how to do I learned from great teachers, so I feel it is my responsibility to pass it on. Thankfully, there's a handful of people who are interested in what I have to show them."

For three nights in July, Ms. Buckley performed Broadway by Request with Seth Rudetsky at the Lyric Stage of the Irving (TX) Arts Center. She tells BroadwayWorld that they might bring that show to New York next spring. In the meantime, she can be seen on the silver screen in M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening in one of her trademark creepy roles, and on series television in The Pacific on HBO and NBC's Law and Order: SVU in the first episode of the new season (September 23, 10 pm EDT). (Speaking of Rudetsky and the website, search for his video conversation with her from the spring of 2007.) When I watched the piece on BWW-TV, I discovered that the diva has a "thing" for funky socks, so I asked her about it. "I love them. I have a huge collection. They're called Antipast and they're from Barney's and they're the best socks in the world! Whenever I need to cheer myself up, I just go and buy two or three pairs of Antipast socks.  I have an entire drawer full of them," she laughed.

During the years that she lived in New York, Ms. Buckley suppressed her dream of owning, riding, and showing cutting horses. She explained, "I never anticipated that I'd be living back in Texas, but I have this incredible love for cutting horses. After 9/11, that dream resurfaced and I just felt obsessed with the need to do that. It was like a real heart calling - I don't know what took me so long to do it." So, she's been riding for six years and works with her trainer Tom Dvorak three or four times/week to improve her ability to show her talented horses. "It's really fun living on a ranch and living with horses. My ranch is really peaceful and very pretty and it's just really a very nice lifestyle for me. I've been pretty driven career-wise my whole life, so at this point it's kind of cool to have my career support the thing that I love, which is horses and animals. They're so sweet - it's just a real calming existence with them. Horses require complete authenticity. If you're out of touch with yourself, then you can't communicate with them."

The Hanover Theatre and the Worcester County audience are fortunate that this authentic Broadway star will be bringing her many talents to the local stage later this month. With passion, she said that her two greatest loves are music and horses. While I don't expect her to ride into town on horseback, I do expect her to deliver a healthy dose of her other love with warmth, style, and brio. It ought to be one for the memory.

Performance: Saturday, September 20, 2008 @ 8 p.m.

The Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts

2 Southbridge Street, Worcester, MA

Tickets ($35-$55) 508-831-0800 or 877-571-7469

www.thehanovertheatre.org

Photo Credit Peter James Zielinski

 

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