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Sam Harris: a soul singer
By JAMES D. WATTS JR. World Scene Writer
Published: 11/2/2009 2:21 AM
Last Modified: 11/2/2009 9:46 AM
Sam
Harris has sung a lot of different types of music over the years — from
pop standards to Broadway tunes, from original songs to contemporary
hits. But no matter the type of song he performs, Sam Harris is first
and foremost a soul singer.
That's not because he's done a couple of albums for Motown in his
career. It's about the way Harris approaches each song he performs,
vocally and emotionally full-out so that you believe every word, every
note that comes out of his mouth is deeply, profoundly personal — that
every song is at once a communication and a kind of exorcism.
At least, that's how it seemed Friday at the VanTrease
Performing Arts Center for Education as Harris performed the first of
two concerts with the Signature Symphony at Tulsa Community College.
We've seen Harris in concert several times — with orchestras,
and accompanied only by his pianist and musical collaborator Todd
Schroeder — and at those concerts we've heard him perform a lot of the
songs that he sang Friday night. And every one of those songs, no
matter how familiar to either performer or listener, Harris sang as if
it were absolutely vital for him to share that melody and those words
with the near-capacity crowd at Friday's show.
He joked about his propensity for sad songs after a hushed and
heartbreaking rendition of Bonnie Raitt's "I Can't Make You Love Me,"
delicately accompanied by pianist Amy Cottingham and cellist Monty
Lawson.
"I don't know why I'm drawn to songs like that —
unrequited love, sorrow, torture, misery," he said. "You look at the
songs I've done, and it's like one long suicide note — even the uptempo
numbers are tragedy with a beat."
Some might think Harris was protesting a bit too much, but
there's as much truth and humor in that statement. His opening number
was the Al Jolson song, "Let Me Sing and I'm Happy," which on the
surface was bright and happy-sounding,
we're-gonna-have-a-good-time-tonight kind of number.
But if you know anything about Jolson himself — and Harris has been
working for years to help bring a musical about Jolson's life to
Broadway — that title has a slight tinge of desperation to it. And
although Harris' performance of the song didn't play up that quality,
you could easily imagine a slightly different arrangement bringing out
Jolson's rapacious need to perform and be applauded.
Harris performed two other Jolson songs during the evening:
"Swanee" and "Rockabye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody," both arranged by
Dan Wooten of Tulsa. Wooten, who directs the music for a local church,
did a superb job with these songs, creating some richly colored
orchestrations that sounded as good as those of the legendary Peter
Matz, who did most of the arrangements of the songs Harris performed.
Matz is known for creating big, bold and brassy settings to
give performers such as Streisand an appropriate background against
which to wail to the heavens. But Harris showed Matz's quieter side, in
a version of "A Cockeyed Optimist" from "South Pacific" that slowed
this usually perky song into a tender, wistful ballad.
Harris offered some of Broadway's golden age with songs by
Harold Arlen, linking "I've a Right to Sing the Blues" and "Stormy
Weather," then melding Cy Coleman's "There's Got to Be Something Better
than This" with Stephen Sondheim's "Move On."
And to close, he sang what have become signature songs, a
gospel-powered "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and "Somewhere Over the
Rainbow."
The Signature Symphony under the direction of Barry Epperley
sounded great behind Harris, the sound sharply focused, the interaction
between singer and musicians perfectly in sync.
In addition to Cottingham and Lawson, a few other musicians
got a chance in the spotlight, as trumpeter Stephen Goforth,
saxophonist Gary Linde and Rich Fisher on trombone took solos during
"The Lady Is a Tramp."
The first half of the evening was more hit and miss. The
performance of Saint-Saens' "Danse Macabre" was very good, with some
excellent solo work by concertmaster Maureen O'Boyle, and the Signature
Chorale's medley of Halloween-friendly songs was delightfully daffy —
especially the wonky efforts to mimic the dance moves of Michael
Jackson's "Thriller."
To give Harris more time to perform, Epperley dropped the planned "Night on Bald Mountain" by Mussorgsky.
It might have been better, though, to have dispensed with the
Stokowski arrangement of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, which had
a few good moments from the woodwinds and violins, but ultimately
sounded as if it were one rehearsal shy of coming together.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/scene/article.aspx?subjectid=272&articleid=20091102_272_D2_SmHria644214
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