Rebecca Luker - Anything Goes: The Songs of Cole Porter

Styles: Vocal
Year: 1996
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 51:14
Size: 117,7 MB
Art: Front

(3:46) 1. Anything Goes
(2:42) 2. After You, Who?
(4:37) 3. Night And Day
(3:15) 4. Ridin' High
(3:36) 5. True Love
(3:46) 6. Leader Of The Big Time Band
(3:11) 7. You Do Something To Me
(3:54) 8. Dream Dancing
(3:29) 9. I Am Loved
(4:09) 10. Ah, Fong Lo!
(3:31) 11. Don't Fence Me In
(2:57) 12. In The Still Of The Night
(4:39) 13. I Like Pretty Things / Where Oh Where? (from the film Mississippi Belle)
(3:36) 14. Every Time We Say Goodbye (from Seven Lively Arts)

Actress/singer Rebecca Luker, whose Broadway credits include The Secret Garden and the 1994 revival of Show Boat, in which she played the female lead, Magnolia, makes her debut solo album with a collection of Cole Porter songs. In her acknowledgments, she thanks her musical director, Patrick Brady, also credited for arrangements and five of the orchestrations (the rest are by Larry Moore), saying his "name should grace the front of this CD." It may be that both Brady and Moore deserve that credit, since their musical treatments of the vintage songs are so stirring. They start with Moore's setting for "Anything Goes," which begins with a simple piano before involving a swing band in a sort of supercharged recollection of 1920s jazz.

On the tracks that follow, the music is vibrant and inventive, redefining the familiar Porter melodies. Luker, a sweet-voiced soprano, holds her own over the maelstrom, after signaling the feisty approach to the material in a cover photograph that finds her, decked out in black dress and elbow-length gloves, wielding a cigar and appearing to be in the middle of a triumphant laugh. It's the right image for the approach she and her orchestrators have taken to reinvigorating one of Broadway's great songwriters.~ William Ruhlmann https://www.allmusic.com/album/anything-goes-rebecca-luker-sings-cole-porter-mw0000572219

Anything Goes: The Songs of Cole Porter

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Rebecca Luker & Sally Wilfert - All the Girls

Styles: Vocal
Year: 2020
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 33:26
Size: 77,4 MB
Art: Front

(2:03) 1. You Are My Best Friend
(5:28) 2. Lovely Lies
(1:55) 3. What Did You Do to Your Face
(3:07) 4. Everybody Says Don't
(0:57) 5. There Are Delicacies
(1:54) 6. I Have Loved Hours at Sea
(1:15) 7. Marilyn Miller
(1:46) 8. A Quoi Bon Dire
(1:17) 9. War Song
(5:07) 10. Millwork/I Could Have Been a Sailor
(2:43) 11. Not Funny
(5:51) 12. Be Careful/Dear Theodosia

The two decade friendship of talented vocalist/actresses Sally Wilfert and Rebecca Luker is apparent on every track of this warm compilation put together, we’re told, singing, cooking, kayaking, and laughing. It’s billed as a celebration of women “in all of our messy wonderfulness.” Instead of drawing on the wealth of recognizable material each has performed, except for the medley “Shows We Could Have Starred in Together,” songs are eclectic. The album is also peppered with brief, melodically untethered poems, put to music by Music Director Joseph Thalken.

Sally Wilfert has appeared in Broadway’s Assassins, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and David, toured the country in the first national tour of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and acted in a roster of Off Broadway productions. She’s currently working on the world premiere of the musical ROW. Rebecca Luker graced the boards starring, in part, in Fun Home, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, Mary Poppins, and The Music Man. Off Broadway and film credits are many. Both women have been regulars on concert and cabaret stages. Luker and her crystalline soprano were alas lost to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis December 2020. She’ll be missed
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“You Are My Best Friend” (Will Aronson/Kyoung-Ae Kang from My Scary Girl) is bouncy, uplifting. “People say girls’ friendship is fickle like water, but…” Really, what do they know? Harmony is grand, chemistry palpable. In “Lovely Lies” (Jeff Blumenkrantz/Beth Blatt), Luker’s character (make no mistake, she plays to character) sings to her mom with a lilting accent from below the Mason-Dixon Line. “It’s time for a southern belle to talk straight.” Her appealing vibrato buoys the feisty confrontation. A duet of Stephen Sondheim’s “Everybody Says Don’t” begins slow and considered with none of the accustomed rat-a-tat-tat pontification, then swells as Luker and Wilfret egg each other on. The arrangement gains swagger until we picture them running, jumping, climbing trees, perhaps scaling a Keep Out sign and rolling down a hill. Exhilarating.

“Shows We Could Have Starred in Together” offers a gamut of melodic emotion, each morphing to the next. “The Wrong Note Rag” (Leonard Bernstein/Betty Comden and Adolph Green) is a showcase for vocal kinship. “Marry the Man Today” (Frank Loesser) becomes advice between BFFs. “Nowadays” (John Kander/Fred Ebb) and “Every Day a Little Death (Stephen Sondheim) peek into women’s lives. “If Mama Was Married” (Jule Styne /Stephen Sondheim) has them playing sisters. Stephen Schwartz’ “For Good” finds the women frenemies.

Both flourished early in dance class as described in Marvin Hamlisch/ Edward Kleban’s “At the Ballet.” Cole Porter’s “Friendship,” and Jerry Herman’s “Bosom Buddies,” replete with vaudevillian fizz, are an obvious fit. A surprising excerpt from “The Flower Duet” (Leo Delibes – 1883’s Lakme) leaves us on the classical side with admiration for range and control.

The two voice arrangement of “Isn’t This Better?” (John Kander/Fred Ebb) conjures a woman addressing herself in a mirror with the image talking back. The blondes have it. Wilfert’s tandem “Millwork” (James Taylor) and “I Could’ve Been a Sailor” (Peter Allen) creates an emotional arc making every lyric credible. “I could have been a sailor/And sailed the seven seas…Well, I settled for safe harbors of my heart.” There are choices. An unexpectedly big ending realizes dreams. Luker’s “Not Funny” (Michael Heitzman/Ilene Reid) is clever. “I’ve looked near and far for something droll and jovial in the soprano repertoire” sings an actress longing for laughs. She’s played all the classic musical theater soprano roles, still something’s missing. “I’ll never find a funny song I fear/Because it’s just so goddamn hard to find a laugh up here!” Wry and sympathetic, the song ends on a high note worthy of young Barbara Cook.

The CD ends with a dual performance of Patty Griffith’s “Be Careful” and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Dear Theodosia.” “All the girls in the Paris night/ All the girls in the pale moonlight/…Be careful how you bend me/Be careful where you send me/Careful how you end me/Be careful with me…” they tell the world in the first. “If we lay a strong enough foundation/We’ll pass it on to you, we’ll give the world to you/And you’ll blow us all away…” they sing in the second. It’s compassionate and encouraging. https://www.womanaroundtown.com/sections/playing-around/cd-all-the-girls-rebecca-luker-and-sally-wilfert/

All the Girls

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