Review: Katie Rose Clarke Emits Post-Election Optimism in Art House Astoria Benefit Concert at Feinstein's/54 Below

Three days after the presidential election, with much of the country still in a daze, attempts to reclaim a sense of "normalcy" felt futile, but a collective grasping for comfort was inescapable.

In her return to Feinstein's/54 Below on November 12, a one-night concert benefiting Art House Astoria, Katie Rose Clarke began her set with a mashup of Pharrell's "Happy" with "Get Happy" by Harold Arlen. Incandescent and in remarkably strong voice, Clarke immediately harnessed and shifted the energy of the room and, for the next 90 minutes, a mutual agreement was made not to check contrition at the door, but for Clarke and her audience to ever-slightly rejoice in what was likely a first post-election realization by many that, well, we still have art.

That the performance was, in fact, a fundraiser for the wonderful Art House Astoria, which provides affordable arts and music education throughout the borough of Queens, colored the evening with an added layer of sentimentality. Taking advantage of her already emotionally soggy audience, Clarke performed stunning versions of several heart-string tuggers: the title tune from LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA, in which she replaced Kelli O'Hara at the age of just 21, a mashup of "For Good" and "Couldn't be Happier," arguably the two most emotionally wrought songs from WICKED (Clarke played Glinda on Broadway and on tour), and an original song called "Rise," which, as that title suggests, was a timely call to arms to stand up tall in the face of despair.

Other selections were less melancholy but as welcomed by a room more primed than usual to embrace a toe-tapping impulse. Highlighting the jazzier bloom in her voice, Clarke sang a silky-smooth "Can't Help Loving that Man of Mine," bathing her audience in the song's warm timbre. Also lush (and incredibly charming), she crooned Pink Martini's "Sympathique," a song which is entirely in French, and she even pantomimed throughout for an audience unversed in that language of love.

A personal highlight of the set list, which admittedly jumped the gun on the holiday season on this early November evening, was another original tune written by Clarke with her musical director, Steven Jamail. "Margarita Christmas," an ode to boozy nativity, was raucous and slightly sardonic, and certainly spoke to an audience that had many times in the days prior found themselves in need of a stiff one. Jamail accompanied Clarke on piano throughout the evening, as well, alongside superb musicians including Micah Burgess (guitar), Colin Dean (bass), and Josh Samuels (drums).

In a savvy decision, Clarke only directly referenced the election at one point throughout the entire performance. "If you're grieving or if you're happy, whatever you're feeling in your heart, this is for you," she said as she introduced "Tomorrow," the song of up and at 'em optimism from ANNIE. Whether you believed Clarke's insistence that the proverbial sun would, in fact, come out tomorrow, or you were of the mindset that it will not shine again until some point after 2020, when Clarke belted those idyllic lyrics, her vibrato fervent and clear, you wanted to believe her.

It is that very optimism which can be extrapolated to the entire purpose of music and, broader, of art. In an evening intended to ensure continued arts exposure for children, it was hard not to dwell on both the big and small pictures: Regardless of one's politics and of what happens in the next four years, art will be there through it all to make sense of it, to make fun of it, to turn it into something tangible or digestible. And maybe, as was the case with Miss Clarke's performance on this night, art may even allow us to for a second forget about the proverbial "it" altogether--- just for that fleeting second, though.

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To learn more about or donate to Art House Astoria, visit its website HERE.

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