LINDA EDER performed an amazing concert on Saturday, June 21st at the
Arthur Zankel Music Center located at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY.
It also served as a recording for her new live CD.
The release date is September 9, 2014. Order HERE!!!
Arthur Zankel Music Center located at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY.
It also served as a recording for her new live CD.
The release date is September 9, 2014. Order HERE!!!
SLIDE SHOW
View from the Stage
Glorious night of songs from Eder at Zankel
By Steve Barnes
Published 7:59 pm, Sunday, June 22, 2014
Saratoga Springs
Pop and Broadway singer Linda Eder has a voice that's at once primal in power and pristine in tone. It also never thins, whether she's delicately caressing a note or delivering a full-throttle climax after yet another rising key change.
Eder's pipes were on glorious display Saturday night at the Zankel Music Center at Skidmore College during a concert that doubled as a recording session for an upcoming CD, Eder's first live album after 15 studio releases over 23 years. Backed by her regular quartet — guitarist Peter Calo, drummer Jerry Marotta, bass player David Finck and music director/pianist Billy Stein — Eder performed 18 songs without an intermission, covering her hits like "Vienna" and "Someone Like You," as well as songs that figure prominently in Eder's early musical life. Among the latter were the "Ice Castles" theme, "Through the Eyes of Love," which she performed during her 12-week reign on "Star Search" in 1987, and a spare, haunting version of the country tune "I'm Not Lisa." Eder told the audience she'd sung the Jessi Coulter song as a teen with the house band at her parents' restaurant in rural Minnesota, where she was normally the dishwasher.
Introducing each number with a short background or narrative, Eder was engaging and often funny. Funny moments included a joke about her ex-husband, Broadway composer Frank Wildhorn, afterward imagining the audience speculating whether she'd leave the remark on the live album. (Answer: "Oh, yeah.") Eder remains the foremost Wildhorn interpreter, as she demonstrated with a trio of his tunes, including "The Mad Hatter," "More than Heaven" and, of course, a soaring version of "Someone Like You" from "Jekyll & Hyde," with which she was associated for more than a decade, from its inception until it finally arrived on Broadway in 1997.
Other Broadway show-stoppers included "I Dreamed a Dream" from "Les Miserables," "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" from "Evita," the title song of "Man of La Mancha" and "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" from the only musical Eder did in high school, "The Sound of Music." (She wanted to play Maria, she said, but because she's "7 feet tall," she was cast as Mother Abbess.) While these renditions received thunderous ovations, some of them standing, Eder's more offbeat choices were often even better, including a funny take on the Barbra Streisand hit "Sam, You Made the Pants Too Long," the tender parent-child song "If I Could," also associated with Streisand, and a quartet of fast-clip songs packaged as the "New Oldies Medley." Perhaps best of all was Eder's duet with guitarist Peter Calo on ABBA's "Fernando," which managed to be simultaneously joyful, affecting and infectious.
At the beginning of the show, Eder joked that she was so comfortable with the material and the large audience of friends and fervent fans that she felt she should have worn jeans or at least taken her shoes off. That she didn't kick off the sparkly silver high heels, which matched her shimmering dress, if only for the piano-accompanied encore, "Over the Rainbow," was a shame. It would have showed a more casual side of Eder. She's never coldly technical in her exactitude, but there was always the sense that she was hyperaware of being flawless; a little more freedom and looseness would have made her even more appealing. When on "Over the Rainbow" she had the slightest burr in her voice on the word "bluebird," the only time all night a note wasn't precise and clear, it was a magical moment of burnished imperfection.
sbarnes@timesunion.com • 518-454-5489
When: 8 p.m. Saturday
Where: Zankel Music Center, Saratoga Springs
Length: 95 minutes; no intermission
Highlights: Jessi Colter's 1974 country hit "I'm Not Lisa," duet with guitarist Peter Calo on ABBA's "Fernando," the hit "Vienna" from her 1991 debut album
The crowd: More than 500, or nearly full, enraptured and adoring
By Steve Barnes
Published 7:59 pm, Sunday, June 22, 2014
Saratoga Springs
Pop and Broadway singer Linda Eder has a voice that's at once primal in power and pristine in tone. It also never thins, whether she's delicately caressing a note or delivering a full-throttle climax after yet another rising key change.
Eder's pipes were on glorious display Saturday night at the Zankel Music Center at Skidmore College during a concert that doubled as a recording session for an upcoming CD, Eder's first live album after 15 studio releases over 23 years. Backed by her regular quartet — guitarist Peter Calo, drummer Jerry Marotta, bass player David Finck and music director/pianist Billy Stein — Eder performed 18 songs without an intermission, covering her hits like "Vienna" and "Someone Like You," as well as songs that figure prominently in Eder's early musical life. Among the latter were the "Ice Castles" theme, "Through the Eyes of Love," which she performed during her 12-week reign on "Star Search" in 1987, and a spare, haunting version of the country tune "I'm Not Lisa." Eder told the audience she'd sung the Jessi Coulter song as a teen with the house band at her parents' restaurant in rural Minnesota, where she was normally the dishwasher.
Introducing each number with a short background or narrative, Eder was engaging and often funny. Funny moments included a joke about her ex-husband, Broadway composer Frank Wildhorn, afterward imagining the audience speculating whether she'd leave the remark on the live album. (Answer: "Oh, yeah.") Eder remains the foremost Wildhorn interpreter, as she demonstrated with a trio of his tunes, including "The Mad Hatter," "More than Heaven" and, of course, a soaring version of "Someone Like You" from "Jekyll & Hyde," with which she was associated for more than a decade, from its inception until it finally arrived on Broadway in 1997.
Other Broadway show-stoppers included "I Dreamed a Dream" from "Les Miserables," "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" from "Evita," the title song of "Man of La Mancha" and "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" from the only musical Eder did in high school, "The Sound of Music." (She wanted to play Maria, she said, but because she's "7 feet tall," she was cast as Mother Abbess.) While these renditions received thunderous ovations, some of them standing, Eder's more offbeat choices were often even better, including a funny take on the Barbra Streisand hit "Sam, You Made the Pants Too Long," the tender parent-child song "If I Could," also associated with Streisand, and a quartet of fast-clip songs packaged as the "New Oldies Medley." Perhaps best of all was Eder's duet with guitarist Peter Calo on ABBA's "Fernando," which managed to be simultaneously joyful, affecting and infectious.
At the beginning of the show, Eder joked that she was so comfortable with the material and the large audience of friends and fervent fans that she felt she should have worn jeans or at least taken her shoes off. That she didn't kick off the sparkly silver high heels, which matched her shimmering dress, if only for the piano-accompanied encore, "Over the Rainbow," was a shame. It would have showed a more casual side of Eder. She's never coldly technical in her exactitude, but there was always the sense that she was hyperaware of being flawless; a little more freedom and looseness would have made her even more appealing. When on "Over the Rainbow" she had the slightest burr in her voice on the word "bluebird," the only time all night a note wasn't precise and clear, it was a magical moment of burnished imperfection.
sbarnes@timesunion.com • 518-454-5489
When: 8 p.m. Saturday
Where: Zankel Music Center, Saratoga Springs
Length: 95 minutes; no intermission
Highlights: Jessi Colter's 1974 country hit "I'm Not Lisa," duet with guitarist Peter Calo on ABBA's "Fernando," the hit "Vienna" from her 1991 debut album
The crowd: More than 500, or nearly full, enraptured and adoring
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