"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Monday, January 21, 2019

Kristin Chenoweth Live Performance: January 19th, 2019


The Minnesota Orchestra has given me some incredible opportunities over the years to see some amazing Broadway performers in concert right in my home state.  In past years, I’ve seen Patti LuPone and Brian Stokes Mitchell perform there, and I reviewed the Leslie Odom Jr. concert I saw there last spring.  Last weekend, it was none other than Galinda the Good Witch herself.  Miss Sally Brown.  Olive Snook.  The one, the only Kristin Chenoweth.

To say that Chenoweth had the audience eating out of the palm of her hand all night is no surprise.  She was an utter delight – she owned our hearts from the minute she stepped out onstage with a parka thrown over her sequined gown.  She opened with a delightful, lilting rendition of “Que Sera Sera” and later sat on a young cellist’s lap while she sang “Zing!  Went the Strings of My Heart.”  She made no bones about singing the songs most widely-associated with her, saying how fortunate she was to even have songs like that, songs she’d sing until she died.  This included a super-fun performance of “Taylor the Latte Boy” and, of course, primo Wicked material.  She was completely winning on “Popular” and made a 12-year-old girl’s life by pulling her onstage to duet with her, singing Elphaba to Chenoweth’s Galinda on “For Good.”  Throughout that song, I was so charmed by her gentle encouragement and instruction to the girl, singing along on Elphaba’s lines when the girl got tongue-tied, bowing with her afterwards, and then telling her how brave she’d been to come up onstage.

Her warmth for everyone she shared the stage with radiated throughout the whole show.  She had nothing but praise for her pianist/musical director, she gushed over the first-chair violinist, and when she brought out a group of University of Minnesota choir students to back her up on her last couple of numbers, she gave them advice on dealing with the words of the haters and thanked them for accompanying her on a “Jesus song” (“Upon This Rock”) when she knew they didn’t all share her faith.  For someone who’s risen to such great heights in her career, she definitely paid it forward to all the artists around her.

But back to the music!  It was all so great.  Her voice just soared on a number of lovely ballads, from “The Sweetheart Tree” to “Till There Was You” from The Music Man to her encore of “I Will Always Love You” (which, by the way, she sang unmiked – you could hear every word.)  She mashed up Willie Nelson’s “Always on My Mind” with “Losing My Mind” from Follies, asserting that she believed country and Broadway could be good bedfellows, and she dedicated a lovely Jason Robert Brown song called “Fifty Years Long” to her parents.  She sang a couple personal numbers reflecting on the state of the country.  A bilingual lullaby was dedicated to children separated from their parents at the border, and her musical director explained how they started performing “The Heart of the Matter” after the Newtown shooting – yes, it’s a breakup song, but in this context, the emotion of it really resonated (“I’m learning to live without you now…”)

My favorites of the night were two of the quietest moments – not physically as quiet as her unmiked encore, but so beautifully gentle and controlled.  Chenoweth of course has an enormous personality, but she has tremendous command over her instrument and showed off her full capability to leave us spellbound.  You could’ve heard a pin drop through her entire, gorgeous performance of “Desperado,” accompanied by an acoustic guitar.  And her act-break performance?  “Bring Him Home.”  So completely stunning.  I swear I had goosebumps over my entire body, and when the lights came up, I just sat there with my mouth hanging open.  Not a night to forget.

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