My spiel for the Weill theatre show has always been : 'well, I wrote this piece so I wouldn't have to do the songs in recital: that is, so I could put them into some kind of dramatic context.' Which, since they're all music theatre songs, is where they came from in the first place. I've always felt that they had more power in some kind of theatrical framework...and in the many, many times I've done the show its been proven true...
However, on Sunday, Alissa Duryee (who played for one of the original incarnations of Whiskey and the version we did in NYC) and I did the songs strictly 'a sec'. In classic recital pose, hand on the piano, in the wonderful space of the American Church in Paris, we sang through the whole repertoire from the disc and from the show. And... I have to admit that it was nice... I wasn't thinking about staging, I wasn't thinking about the next lighting cue, I could spend all my energy thinking about the songs and what Alissa was doing with them, and responding to her ideas.
What was wonderful for me was that the idea behind the show is how much of Weill's work is about more than just a great song... he wasn't just a song huckster. Instead his work goes back and forth between earthy and spiritual and political. In the show I talk about how some of his songs could be sung in a Cabaret, or a Cathedral... so after many, many years in the Cabaret, it was nice to give them some time in the Cathedral...
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