Before Linda Eder’s July 12 concert, officially opening Daniel Nardicio’s Icon series for the season at the Ice Palace, some of us who know her only from her recordings, which bowl us over, wondered, hopefully, if she would really sound just like that in person, or would we find that sound engineers and other technicians manipulate her voice to make it sound so good. We were thrilled to find that everything we know and love about Eder’s singing is entirely real. I was seated in the front row and often got to hear Eder’s singing before the amplification did its work, and was doubly impressed. Linda Eder gives master classes—and I think we got one on July 12 in Cherry Grove. Assisting and giving most excellent support were Music Director and pianist Billy Stein and bassist Conrad Korsch.
To start off what Eder called “The Memory Lane Show,” she sang Melissa Manchester’s “Through the Eyes of Love,” displaying her amazing high range, strong and pure. Then she quipped, “My name is George and that was my drag act”—apparently she’s heard that her songs are frequently lip-synched to by the best! She went on to a swinging “Blue Skies,” her voice consistently clear and full. In “I’m not Lisa (my name is Julie)” a song that Eder’s been singing since her youth, she ruefully disabused a love of his apparent illusion that she and her predecessor in his life are one.
Eder made her Broadway debut in Frank Wildhorn’s “Jekyll & Hyde” and, from that show, she shared an affecting “Someone Like You,” which was interrupted three times for applause—for an especially plangent phrase, for a long-held strong note, and for a quiet note—before it ended. She followed it, no, not with the much-requested “Bring on the Men,” but with comic ethnic number “Sam, You Made the Pants too Long,” complete with mock dance break. From “Les Misérables,” the first musical that she ever saw, as a teenager in Minnesota, she sang a sensitive “I Dreamed a Dream,” before ending the song with full force.
Korsch’s bass played a big part in Eder’s “Stormy Weather,” the torch song to end all torch songs, as she sang the first verse with bass alone, and dispatched some impressive long-held quiet notes near the end, solely with bass accompaniment. Calling “Evita” one of her favorite musicals, she gave us a restrained “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina,” until she reached “And as for fortune,” which she delivered expansively. Some interpolated high notes and melismas in high head tone marked her repetition of the penultimate verse. Then she got hot with the Mad Hatter’s song from Wildhorn’s “Wonderland.”
“The Sound of Music” was Eder’s high school musical—“I wanted so much to be Maria,” she confided and was answered by a male chorus of “Me, too”s—but Mother Superior was her role instead and she offered a fully classical “Climb Every Mountain,” pulling out all stops for a powerhouse climax, capped by a high cadenza. After a brisk “Charade” and a nostalgic “Vienna” (“It was the best time of my life”), which turned into a showstopper, Eder turned to a swashbuckling “Don Quixote,” from “Man of LaMancha,” for a grand finale, which included a high vocalise, to which she invited singing along and, in some cases, got it. A pairing of “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows” and “Over the Rainbow” was Eder’s encore, deliciously sung.
Daniel Nardicio’s Icon series continues at the Ice Palace with Linda Lavin and Billy Stritch in “Possibilities” on July 27, a Mardi Gras celebration on August 2, Jackie Hoffman on August 9, Christine Ebersole and the Aaron Weinstein Trio in “Strings Attached,” a benefit for the Save Our Community House initiative, on August 16, Kathy Najimy in “Lift up Your Skirt” on August 23, and an evening with choreographer Toni Basil on August 30. Tickets are available at www.DWorld.us, at the Ice Palace/Grove Hotel office, and at Gostoso in Fire Island Pines.