Business - Casinos
Thursday, Mar. 10, 2011
By PAM FIRMIN - pfirmin@sunherald.com
Liza Minnelli’s 14-song CD release, “Confessions,” will be the centerpiece of her upcoming performance at the Beau Rivage Resort Casino in Biloxi, but it will be audience response that shapes the show.
“The audience is your partner in your performance,” the Academy Award-winning entertainer said during a phone interview with the Sun Herald. “I don’t want them to get bored. You know if the audience is tuned in to you. It’s just like any conversation with somebody: you find out what they are interested in.”
She will give a 90-minute performance at 8 p.m. Friday, March 18.
Minnelli intends for her music to create the kind of cozy warmth in the Beau’s 1,500-seat theater that she found in the living room setting where “Confessions” originated.
“I used to have these evenings at my house,” Minnelli said in a press release, “usually on a weekend, and people like Tony Bennett or … Janet Jackson would come by, and we would end up singing around the piano.”
Inspired by those sessions, Minnelli compiled “Confessions” as a collection of American classics culled from the catalogues of great writers. She strived to omit over-familiar selections.
Included on the CD are ”All the Way, “You Fascinate Me So,” “I Got Lost in His Arms” and “Moments Like This,” written by such greats as Sammy Cahn, Cy Coleman, Irving Berlin and Burton Lane.
Don’t miss the title track, “Confessions” by Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz, whether at the concert or on the CD. While it’s the shortest of them all at 1:46 minutes, Minnelli renders the quirky punch lines of its three stanzas with clear elegance.
Billy Stritch, who is her piano accompanist for the CD, will also perform at the live concert. Instruments also include bass, drums and more by other troupe members.
The daughter of actress/singer Judy Garland and film director Vincente Minnelli, Liza Minnelli has been performing since she was 16 and will celebrate her 65th birthday on March 12.
She belongs to an elite group of entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy and Tony award. Her Academy Award for best actress was presented for her 1972 role of Sally Bowles in “Cabaret,” one of eight Oscars won by the movie.
As her scheduled permits, she works with students at The Actor’s Studio teaching master classes in acting and singing. Her most important instruction to them, she said, is: “Your have to emotionally invest in the song.”
As for her audience, she said, “I can’t think about my audience until I get on stage when I can see them. I look at my audience. I like the audience. I think we’re in it together. They are giving me their time, which is the most valuable thing you have. So I respect that.
“I listen,” Minnelli said, “and you can’t react until you’ve heard something.”
Read more: http://www.sunherald.com/2011/03/10/2933368/beau-to-present-confessions-by.html#ixzz1GIF0l3Jm
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment