Arts and Artists of Tomorrow
Songbook
In Pieces – Joey Contreras
What a delightful way to end the twenty-sixth(!) season of Songbook. In Pieces
is described as a song cycle—as such, it’s not quite a musical and not quite an
opera. The overall style was Pop/Broadway/Rock. John Znidarsic wore two red hats for the occasion, as host and director. The cast members—Melanie Brook,
Mia Gerachis, Brad Greer, Stevi Incremona, Tyler Jent, and
Michael Williams—performed well and had memorized all sixteen of
Mr. Contreras’ songs. Susan Mandel, cello, and Gokce Erem, violin, rounded out the ensemble, with Mr. Contreras, at the piano, being the guiding force.
The evening did not present a complete story. Instead it linked the songs together with some nice acting as well as singing. I guess the overarching theme was the vagaries and what-ifs of love in all of its guises. Intro/You Never Know had a touch of a rock feel, hinting at what can be, and featured the entire company. It successfully set the tone. The different songs reflected on celebrating and acknowledging the young kind of love (a song title), and the moment for one’s time to shine, in a song that had a real powerhouse ending.
Me and Mr. Popularity was a sweetly funny song about a nerdy guy who has a crush on the guy he is tutoring in computering. While it was sometimes difficult to hear and understand some of the lyrics (many of them went by too quickly to really register upon a first hearing), Love Wildly had a repeated lyric that was quite telling: “I’d rather love wildly than not love at all.” And Facebook entered the musical theater vernacular with My Simple Request, sung by a gal who had a relationship in her mind only, since she could not bring herself to actually send the FB Friend request. (A similar moment took place in Significant Other, which I recently saw on Broadway, in a wildly funny scene where a guy finally hits the ‘Send’ button for an email that everybody repeatedly tells him not to send.) Welcome to the theater, Facebook!
The journey continued through the ‘why isn’t it working?’ phase of love, as well as the ‘can it work?’ phase. As is often the case, for those of us who have lived through these phases, the answer is elusive more times than not. During the equivalent of an 11 o’clock number, In Pieces, a phone went off. And, bravely, the composer halted the performance, asked for it to be turned off (the guy eventually left the hall, since he couldn’t put his hands on his phone immediately), and the performers took the number from the top again. Bravo to both the composer and the artist singing. The gist of the song was—can we only love in pieces, even if we think or know that this won’t last forever? Mr. Contreras then took the lead on the intro to Fork in the Road, which brought us to the crux of the ‘love’ issue, and then was joined by the full company. The song also incorporated the lyrics “you never know,” which brought us full circle.
This was the premiere performance of the song cycle, and I think it shows a tremendous amount of promise. As always, Songbook is a bit of a crap shoot, although I knew ahead of time that this would be an evening of Mr. Contreras’ music. This one was on the money. Not surprisingly, I will be attending Songbook when it begins its twenty-seventh season in September.
ConcertMeister
❤️
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