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Sylvia McNair at Spivey Hall
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CONCERT REVIEW
Soprano Sylvia McNair and pianist Ted Taylor, Saturday at Spivey Hall.
www.spiveyhall.org.
Everyone who knows Sylvia NcNair?s singing loves her, don?t they? The soprano?s distinctive, resplendent voice and uncommonly high musical intelligence ? add her scrupulous preparation, her al-ways per-fect dic-tion and her beauty, of a small-town girl gone glamorous ? made her an opera star.
But she’s chucked that life for a different career: as a pops singer. Her reasons for the switch must be agonizing for a diva only in her mid-40s. Earlier this year, she told Opera News magazine, ?I have completely disconnected myself from the classical world … and I honestly don?t know what anybody?s doing in that world anymore.?
For Spivey Hall?s season opening gala, Saturday night, McNair sang her new one-woman-and-a-pianist show titled ?This is All Very New To Me? ? which was also the title of her lovely opening song, from Horwitt and Hague?s 1955 musical ?Plain and Fancy.?
For the most part, the audience was eating up this new McNair. Her connections to Atlanta?s classical world run deep: beginning two decades ago, Robert Shaw mentored her, giving the young artist invaluable opportunities. Soon after, McNair sang light soprano roles ? music from Handel and Mozart to Britten ? with shimmering, glorious aplomb. By 2000, however, a severe vocal crisis forced several cancelations at New York?s Metropolitan Opera.
So she?s reinvented herself with a repertoire that?s easier on the voice ? at Spivey she used a microphone ? and which requires a different skill set to convincingly emote. She found a bittersweet nostalgia in the Vernon Duke ballad ?Autumn in New York.? Stephen Sondheim?s ?Send in the Clowns? and songs by George Gershwin and Jerome Kern were delivered eagerly, passionately and carefully.
Between songs, she told the audience of her days living on Peachtree Street and she singled out old friends, complete with hugs, who had come to support the new Sylvia.
Musically, she was best in a set of waltz tunes by Richard Rogers, where it finally felt like she’d freed herself, let herself be spontaneous with the music.
The show is a work in progress. Pianist Ted Taylor was a supple Gershwin player, thickening up middle harmonies, giving the composer heft as well as tunefulness. (In the right hands, Gershwin can sound like THE great American composer.)
Yet this cabaret act often felt mild, conservatory-classical and heavily scripted. She might profit from a jazzman pianist, a musician a little more louche, to complement her Miss Perfect stage manner.
Elsewhere, the entertainment felt cobbled together. Trained as a violinist, McNair took out her fiddle for the choo-choo double-stops of ?Orange Blossom Special.? She half-fiddled, half-sang a version of “Oh Danny Boy,” which she dedicated to the Atlanta Opera’s William Fred Scott, another valued colleague. McNair plays the violin well and in tune, but there was something disconcerting to see a charismatic opera star — oops, former opera star — jamming on her student violin, hoping to please. Still, McNair?s got the musicianship and personality to make a career change, even if she?s not quite there yet.
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