Review: Jane Monheit's THE MERRIEST Is a Seasonal Splash at Birdland

“You better watch out. You better not cry.  Better not pout. I'm telling you why: Santa Claus is coming to town.”

Like the gentleman from the North Pole, Jane Monheit is coming to town, too. In fact, she’s here in New York at Birdland through Saturday night.  But you better watch out and make a reservation before it sells out, or you might pout. As far as the crying, she did some herself as she got caught up in the bittersweet moods during a blend of the bittersweet classics “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” (a string a capella rendition) and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”  Emotion ran high and mascara ran, too.  Words caught in her throat.  “You can’t sing high notes when you’re crying during a ballad,” she said afterwards. 

 But plenty of other selections were of the happier sort, in her set titled The Merriest, sharing the name of her 2022 Christmas album, which she drew on heavily – along with numbers from her 2005 release, The Season. 

She pointedly mentioned a few facts about both recordings early on, saying it’s her “job” to promote each one, but promised, “I won’t mention it again.” But she did.  Quite a few times.  So, it was, I guess, a winking acknowledgment of the need to be one’s own salesperson.  And you can buy them both right there at the venue — a fine choice for holiday gifts, if you’re making a list and checking it twice, check them out.

Relaxed and in the zone, smiling and laughing, scat-singing and using melisma, lavishing her creamy, dreamy, elastic voice, the merry Monheit was a pleasure to hear. The seemingly rapt, responsive audience was so attentive to her own concentration and elegant sustained notes that concluded some songs that they waited to clap until the very end of those tones, rather than being overly quick with applause that would drown them out.  Why break the spell in the name of enthusiasm?

While the repertoire was mostly made up of the seasonal songs you’ve heard a thousand times (perhaps just in the last week), the arrangements, tempi, and phrasing brought some jazz freshness.  “Silver Bells” gets the most inventive revamp.  “The Christmas Song,” aka “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire,” included its rarely retained introductory verse (“All through the year we've waited: waited through spring and fall/ To hear silver bells ringing/ See winter time bringing/ The happiest season of all”), but placed it in the middle. And there was a sign of the times in a tweak to this number, a nod to the fact that some Alaska natives and indigenous people in the Arctic object to the word “Eskimos,” the lyric’s line about seeing “folks dressed up like Eskimos” was changed to “folks dressed up from head to toe.”

    Jazzy Jane spoke fondly of her instrumental trio, telling us, “They’re not just hired guns.  They’re my closest friends.  I even married one of them.”  That skillful spouse is drummer Rick Montalbano and the others are bassist Neil Miner and pianist Max Haymer, who was the effective sole accompanist on the gentlest items.  The bassist was featured on “Winter Wonderland” which the singer set up by saying she often creates her own “backstory” for a character to deliver the words from a specific perspective (the way an actor might create things to have in mind). In this case, her imagined scenario was that she was a woman soon to be dumped during the holiday season, but was clueless about her boyfriend’s plan.  She “cast” Mr. Miner as the guy, with his end of the conversation represented by the way he played distinctive little solo phrases between her sung comments. This got a few chuckles, but the concept has the potential to be fully fleshed out with some hammier interaction where she might cozy up to him, ad lib a few words to seek reactions while he ignores her and looks annoyed. It seemed they were almost starting to “go there.”  Anyway (to use a word she favored to change subjects and moods in her patter), it was cool musically to have him featured. All three musicians got soloing spots in “The Christmas Waltz,” taken at a brisker clip than many singers opt for.

In any season, a show by Monheit is a highlight. 

---

See www.janemonheit.com  and www.birdlandjazz.com   

Photos of Jane singing by Kevin Alvey

To post a comment, you must register and login.