Tony Bennett performed standards and holiday songs on Tuesday night with the Count Basie Orchestra at the Apollo Theater.
Poise in the wind of uncertainty is a very old idea in American pop. Basically outdated and nearly archaeological, its the default disposition of all songs that cycle constantly through cocktail-hour soundtracks, songs from a disappearing race of sanguine, moral-romantic heroes.
When Tony Bennett, now 82, enacts that kind of poise onstage, whats impressive isnt that hes doing it at all but how he does it, his consummate and subtle technique. You dont look at his face for clues of what the songs about, you look at his hands and gauge the timbre of his voice.
On Tuesday night at the Apollo Theater, where he performed with the Count Basie Orchestra (currently led by Bill Hughes), he kept demonstrating the meaning of lyrics with perfect hand gestures. In Kander and Ebbs Maybe This Time, after he sang the pitifully hopeful epithets Mr. Peaceful, Mr. Happy, he raised an open hand, as if he were in a classroom, to finish the line: thats what I want to be. The raised hand meant that these are privileges, not rights.
Mr. Bennett holds the mike in the left hand, up between his tie knot and his breast pocket, and occasionally down by the button of his jacket; he never raises the upper arm or blocks any part of his face. The crooked-arm posture looks comfortable, as if hes not thinking about it, but he is a one-man mixing board: he slightly raises or lowers the microphone constantly, depending on the force of his singing from the conversational level to the almost flamenco-style yelling he got into during the first and last songs of the set and the force of the band.
In one case he didnt use the microphone at all. Demonstrating the superior acoustics of the old Apollo new theaters are like filing cabinets, he remarked he sang Fly Me to the Moon accompanied only by his guitarist Gray Sargent. There was no instrumental solo here, and that was the case for most of the songs in this swift, concise show. Mr. Bennett got in and out of songs quickly. When a solo was played by Mr. Sargent or the drummer Harold Jones or the pianist Lee Musiker it counted.
Poise in the wind of uncertainty is a very old idea in American pop. Basically outdated and nearly archaeological, its the default disposition of all songs that cycle constantly through cocktail-hour soundtracks, songs from a disappearing race of sanguine, moral-romantic heroes.
When Tony Bennett, now 82, enacts that kind of poise onstage, whats impressive isnt that hes doing it at all but how he does it, his consummate and subtle technique. You dont look at his face for clues of what the songs about, you look at his hands and gauge the timbre of his voice.
On Tuesday night at the Apollo Theater, where he performed with the Count Basie Orchestra (currently led by Bill Hughes), he kept demonstrating the meaning of lyrics with perfect hand gestures. In Kander and Ebbs Maybe This Time, after he sang the pitifully hopeful epithets Mr. Peaceful, Mr. Happy, he raised an open hand, as if he were in a classroom, to finish the line: thats what I want to be. The raised hand meant that these are privileges, not rights.
Mr. Bennett holds the mike in the left hand, up between his tie knot and his breast pocket, and occasionally down by the button of his jacket; he never raises the upper arm or blocks any part of his face. The crooked-arm posture looks comfortable, as if hes not thinking about it, but he is a one-man mixing board: he slightly raises or lowers the microphone constantly, depending on the force of his singing from the conversational level to the almost flamenco-style yelling he got into during the first and last songs of the set and the force of the band.
In one case he didnt use the microphone at all. Demonstrating the superior acoustics of the old Apollo new theaters are like filing cabinets, he remarked he sang Fly Me to the Moon accompanied only by his guitarist Gray Sargent. There was no instrumental solo here, and that was the case for most of the songs in this swift, concise show. Mr. Bennett got in and out of songs quickly. When a solo was played by Mr. Sargent or the drummer Harold Jones or the pianist Lee Musiker it counted.
