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If you've lived in New York long enough,
there are performances indelibly carved
into your memory, touchstones that
remind you why you endure New York and
why you continue to frequent cabarets,
theatres, and performance halls. The
night that a very young Whitney ruled
Carnegie Hall, for example, and the
Valentine's Day at Birdland, when a
largely unknown Canadian singer named
Diana Krall handed out long-stemmed
roses to her audience. When you're in
attendance at one of these performances,
there's often an adrenaline buzz that
courses through the audience, bonding
patrons with the awareness that this is
a performance, this is a night, long to
be remembered - and you were there.
Morgan James. That's the name. With a
voice as soulful as Aretha and a range
as wide as Whitney's, Morgan James also
possesses the interpretive chops of
confessional singers such as Laura Nyro,
Janis Ian, Melissa Etheridge, and more
recently, Adele and Lizz Wright. All of
which would be quite a package right
there - and yet, there's no ignoring the
fact of James's stunning physicality.
Imagine a bombshell as sexy as Jessica
Rabbit, with a mane of blonde hair as
lustrous as a shampoo commercial,
striding onto a stage in a form-fitting
Azzedine Alaia number that silhouettes
every curve. Now, imagine this gorgeous
woman opening her mouth and reaching
down, way down, deep into her inner soul
and revealing the pain of love gone bad.
That voice is a revelation, and when
combined with the soulful persona that
is Morgan James, the combination is a
femme fatale whose voice takes you to
the very bone of existence.
James has been making her mark on New
York audiences with a handful of
sold-out engagements at boites like le
Poisson Rouge and Dominion. Her recent
performance at Birdland, as a part of
Jim Caruso's "Broadway at Birdland"
series, was her debut at the illustrious
jazz club - and as homage, James climbed
on a stool, kicked off her stiletto
pumps, and gave the crowd a wrenching
version of "Ill Wind" that evoked both
Billie and Lena, while, at the same
time, remaining determinedly fixed
within the core of James's own being.
As a performer, James was trained at
Juilliard, which, as she told the
sold-out crowd, was where she fixed her
sights as early as fourteen, telling her
voice teacher, "That's where I'm going."
That kind of fierce determination and
ambition marks James's approach to
performing. As comfortable singing
Bernstein's "Mass" with the Baltimore
Symphony Orchestra as she is on a
cabaret stage, James also starred with
the original cast in the Broadway
musical "The Addams Family" and is soon
to appear in Frank Wildhorn's
"Wonderland" - and while Broadway might
well want to hold onto James (and with
good reason - that voice reaches
effortlessly to the rafters), it's going
to be James who decides what's best for
her expansive talents.
Singing several song selections from
Katie Thompson, one of her favorite
songwriters, James brought a reverent
hush over Birdland, which is, after all,
a supper club. Not a ping of crystal
disturbed James's heartfelt declamations
of love for bad men, mean men, "the
meanest man I ever seen." Her version of
Thompson's "Make Me Hate You" was as raw
as anything by Tracee Nelson. And when
James sang from the Aretha canon, it was
with the wisdom accrued from listening
to her elders and then making something
her own. You might initially hear Aretha
in James's renditions, but James, with
her remarkably supple and versatile
voice (it's truly a wondrous instrument)
digs into the lyrics with a conviction
so personal that you're transfixed by
the depth of emotion.
Backed by a seven-piece band with which
she worked in perfect tandem, James
would, as someone commented, "hold a
note for thirty bars - and then play
with it some more." And when she
performed "Ain't No Way" as her final
number, it was perfectly evident that
there "ain't no way" that anyone in that
room was ever going to forget this
night.
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