The Fable of a Statesman Who Couldn't Make Good

George Ade Dept.: We invite the distinguished newspaperman and fables-writer to spin another yarn of How Things Were and How They Ought to Should Be, vintage 1899. Amazing how contemporary it remains.
                                                                                  

Drawing by Clyde J. Newman

ONCE THERE WAS A BLUFF whose Long Suit was Glittering Generalities.

He hated to Work and it hurt his Eyes to read Law, but on a Clear Day he could be heard a Mile, so he became a Statesman.

Whenever the Foresters had a Picnic they invited him to make the Principal Address, because he was the only Orator who could beat out the Merry-Go-Round.

The Habit of Dignity enveloped him.

Upon his Brow Deliberation sat. He wore a Fireman's moustache and a White Lawn Tie, and he loved to Talk about the Flag.

At a Clam-Bake in 1884 he hurled Defiance at all the Princes and Potentates of Europe, and the Sovereign Voters, caught up by his Matchless Eloquence and Unswerving Courage, elected him to the Legislature.

The Fur Horizon

From the Theatrical Vault Dept.: A few years ago, I was hired to write promotional copy for Albany’s Capital Repertory Company (known now in our buzzword-intensive era as TheREP). Most of the pieces were specific to shows that mightn’t mean much to you, but I’m hoping you’ll enjoy the interview I did with David Ives.

                                                                                   

IT’S A CASTING DIRECTOR’S NIGHTMARE. You’re closing up shop after an exhausting day of auditioning actors, good and bad, and you’d just as soon not hear another word of the play – at least for the rest of the night. In David Ives’s “Venus in Fur,” it’s a playwright named Thomas who’s just about to wrap up an audition day when an oddly-garbed actress barges in, wet from the rain.

David Ives | Photo by Jennifer S. Altman

The setup seems a million miles from the short novel that inspired the play, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs. “It’s a serious novel. It’s a central text of world literature,” says Thomas, to which the actress Vanda replies, “Oh, I thought from the play it had to be porn. Anyway, you don’t have to tell me about sadomasochism. I’m in the theater.”

“The book is dull,” says David Ives. “Very dull. But famous.” It is, in fact, the book that bestowed its author’s name upon the willful pursuit of pain: masochism. It tells a story-within-a-story as its unnamed narrator reads the confessions of a friend who describes a volatile, provocative romance.

But that’s not where Ives got started with the project. “I had this terrible idea,” he says, “which was to turn The Story of O into a play. It’s a really terrible idea because it could never possibly work in any way.” Another classic of pain-and-subjugation literature, The Story of O was published pseudononymously in 1954 and garnered both literary awards and obscenity charges.

Good Reception

From the Vault Dept.: During the course of my thirty-year Metroland career, I wrote a massively wide variety of reviews, advances, calendar listings, puff pieces, political pieces, and the kind of utilitarian stuff that reassured advertisers that this alternative newsweekly wasn’t too damn communist to help hawk their wares. Thus it was that I was asked to cook up the piece below, offering tips on your wedding reception dinner.

                                                                                                   

I ALWAYS END UP at the back of the prime rib line. After eyeballing the pasta station and deciding that the line pace there is glacial, I ease over to the carving station just as Table Eight is called and suddenly twelve enormous people have clustered in front of me, plates in hand, each drenching an outsized chop in all available sauces.

It doesn’t have to be that way. The wedding dinner is probably the most variable element of that special day, and it defines the look of the occasion. A feast for 400 in a capacious catering hall is very different from dinner for 40 in a restaurant – or catered at home.

The key to success is your involvement. Your leadership, in fact, because the more you entrust to others, the more it will look like every other cut-and-paste affair.

This is not to disparage the work of the planner or caterer or other wedding professional, who should ensure that the event runs smoothly, but it’s up to you to add the individual touches that make this your wedding and nobody else’s.

Babes in Goyland

From the Theater Vault Dept.: Here’s a charming little musical that had its world premiere in Cohoes, NY, in 1989; it had runs in Chicago and Manhattan in the years that followed. I’m going to give you my review first, followed by an interview piece that ran a week earlier.

                                                                                         

“IT'S LIKE A MOVIE,” sings Rachel, a screen-struck character in Theda Bara and the Frontier Rabbi. And she's absolutely right. This musical, receiving its world premiere at the Cohoes Music Hall, boasts an improbable plot, unbelievable sets, wildly uncharacteristic songs and a gratuitous helping of beautiful women offering generous views of their bosoms.

I'm going to see it again as soon as I can.

The creators, composer Bob Johnston and writer Jeff Hochhauser, call their show a “shameless musical,” and shameless it is in exploiting every entertainment style that's ever been overmagnified on the silver screen.

Set in 1917 at the height of Theda Bara's stardom, it opens with the glamorous vamp at her most austere and inaccessible, just as publicist Selwyn Farp (Raymond Wood) designed her. The gorgeous Theda, played in varying states of dress by pretty Liz Larsen, is regarded as such an evil influence that no self-respecting person would be caught watching her films.

That's the problem a young rabbi goes up against when a member of his temple catches him at the movies. Isaac Birnbaum is so flustered that he explains his purpose as information-gathering: he's going to deliver a sermon against the vile woman.

Youth’s Magic Horn

From the Vault Dept.: Thirty years ago, the Albany (NY) Symphony offered a splendid performance of Mahler’s Fourth, one of the more accessible of that composer’s mighty works. These were the glory days of Geoffrey Simon’s association with the orchestra; the Australian-born conductor was the ASO’s music director for four years. He helped lead a festival of Australian music, of which component concerts are reviewed here and here.

                                                                                           

MAHLER’S SYMPHONY NO. 4 is a conductor’s paradise. It’s the musical equivalent of painting a fine and detailed figure study, the combinations of instruments providing an exotic palette of colors.

Albany Symphony Orchestra music director Geoffrey Simon gave the orchestra one of its best showings yet Friday night at the Troy Music Hall when he led them through this work. It was a thinking man’s Mahler, extruding passion from a considered plan. Mahler was a symphonic dramatist: his works have plots, characters, confrontations. Simon understands this construction and is as much director as conductor.

And, of course, there was the setting of settings in the Troy Music Hall, an edifice dating from the age of symphonic excess that Mahler brought to a zenith. The walls filled the soft sighs of the slow third movement with warmth; likewise, the terrible outbursts were given that extra flare of life.

We’ve been witnessing the steady growth of the ASO’s violins into a sections with cohesive, characteristic sounds; this symphony gave the cellos and basses a chance to show their stuff and it further confirmed the artistic development of the orchestra.

Seoul Food

AS A CHILD, Jinah Kim’s favorite dish was pan-fried yellow croaker. When her mother would prepare it for the family, it reaffirmed their Korean roots. The family had moved from Inchon, South Korea, to Framingham, Massachusetts, when Jinah was three. Other family members had a jewelry store there, which probably kindled Jinah’s entrepreneurial spirit. But there were more moves to come: to Chicago in 1998, where her father could work as a pastor, and then to Troy, NY, in 2001, where he founded a church and also started a jewelry shop nearby.

Photo by B. A. Nilsson

“I was 12,” Jinah explained, “so I was very sensitive to – everything.” She was speaking at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, New York, on February 21, at a talk titled A Place at the Table. It was part of the college’s Voices lecture series, which seeks to stimulate community awareness and discussion, a mission Kim fulfills with passionate dedication.

“I wanted to bring some school friends home, she continued, and I was so excited when my friends and I got off the bus in front of my house.” She was hoping the visit would help her achieve the assimilation she sought; instead, she was mortified to discover her mother cooking yellow croaker. “The smell of that fish – it’s hard to describe. The stink is unbelievable. It smells like the ocean, and that smell sticks to your clothes. I was so upset, I ended up scolding my mom. It was terrible.”

The Scientific Scenario

Guest Blogger Dept.: Do movies pander to the masses? Nearly a century ago, Robert Benchley argued the point in this 1920 Vanity Fair piece.

                                                                                        

The Scientific Scenario: A Film Version of The Education of Henry Adams for Culture’s Sake.

SOONER OR LATER some one is going to come out and say that the movies are too low-brow. I can just see it coming. Maybe some one has said it already, without its having been brought to my attention, as I have been very busy for the past two weeks on my yearly accounts (my accounts for the year 1920, I mean. What with one thing and another, I am a bit behind in my budget system).

And whenever this denouncement of the movies takes place, the first thing that is going to be specifically criticized is the type of story which is now utilized for scenarios. How can a nation hope to inject any culture in the minds of its people if it feeds them with moving-picture stories dealing with elemental emotions like love, hate, and a passion for evening-dress? Scenarios to-day have no cultural background. That's the trouble with them. They have no cultural background.

Now, if we are to make the movies count for anything in the mental development of our people, we must build them of sterner stuff. We must make them from stories and books which are of the mind rather than of the body. The action should be cerebral, rather than physical, and instead of thrilling at the sight of two horsemen galloping along a cliff, we should be given the opportunity of seeing two opposing minds doing a rough-and-tumble on the edge of a nice problem in Dialectics or Metaphysics.

Getting Your Bach Back

SOMETIMES YOU NEED NO WORDS to make a convincing argument. Listen to violinist Isabelle Faust dance through the difficult bariolage passages in Bach’s Concerto in D Minor, and you will be convinced, as I am, that this piece originally was written for the fiddle, and not for a keyboard. It’s known today as a keyboard concerto because the only authentic manuscript comes from a collection the composer made of seven keyboard concertos, all of them thought to be recycling material from earlier works.

There remain doubts, because Bach scholars are aggressively opinionated, but not only do I say that Faust’s interpretation of this work is authentication enough – I’m also prepared to give the keyboard crowd permanent ownership of the concerto in F Major, BWV 1057, which is better known as the Brandenburg Concerto No. 4, in which guise it’s a violin assuming the keyboard’s role. But I find the keyboard to be more idiomatic.

Which shouldn’t be surprising. Bach knew his way around the keyboard, be it harpsichord or organ, and could write as idiomatically for those instruments as he could for the violin, as a player of which he also excelled. But it’s not just the keyboard repertory that Faust is plundering in this new two-CD collection: she also takes aim at the flute, seizing as she does the Orchestral Suite No. 2, BWV 1067. The flute-solo version is in B Minor, but Bach authority Joshua Rifkin maintains that an earlier version in A Minor featured the violin, and Faust’s performance does nothing but support that notion with an engaging, danceable approach that meshes perfectly with the original-instruments approach of her accompanying ensemble, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, conducted by concertmaster Bernhard Forck.

New Day Coming

FORTY-FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY, when the First of March also fell on a Friday, seven aides and advisors to Richard Nixon were indicted by Judge John Sirica for their roles in the Watergate imbroglio -- and Nixon was named an unindicted co-conspirator. Let's celebrate.

A Box of Berlioz

ONE OF THE MOST SURPRISING DISCOVERIES lurking in a trip through the complete works of Hector Berlioz is the sense of intimacy that peeks through. Here’s a composer who demanded extra-large orchestral forces, and whose music surges with the grandest of gestures, yet in and among those roarings are moments of incredible delicacy, rendered all the more delicate by the context in which we find them.

Thus, as the “Sanctus” in Berlioz’s Requiem comes to us an hour into the piece (after the tumult of a terrifying “Rex tremendae” and a big-boned “Hostias”), a solo tenor soars above quiet strings – here it’s the welcome voice of Robert Tear – in a passage that seems worlds apart from what came before, but it’s precisely because of the moods and momentum that brought us here that we’re so moved by the moment (in this respect, it’s not unlike the “Sanctus” in Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis).

We celebrate Berlioz in 2019 – March 8 being the 150th anniversary of his death – and Warner Classics has produced a 27-CD of the composer’s complete works to honor the occasion. The aforementioned Requiem is the formerly out-of-print version recorded in 1975 by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Louis Fremaux, a stirring performance that holds its own against the legendary alternatives helmed by Colin Davis and Charles Munch.

The Edsel Show

SPEAKING OF BING (a new biography of whom I reviewed a few days ago), here's an example of his work in the 1950s. He'd just finished making the movie "High Society" with Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong, and he'd long championed the work of Rosemary Clooney. Here they are together in the 1957 live broadcast of "The Edsel Show," a variety program also featuring the vanished-from-history dance team of Mr. Conn and Mr. Mann. What you'll see is the videotape prepared for the west coast's airing of the program, a superior alternative to the kinescopes then in constant use. But the trouble with videotape was that it could be erased a re-used, which doomed many a so-recorded show. This one escaped, and you can find fascinating info about it from Emmy-nominated film editor Kris Trexler at this web page. The video linked below also gives a good background and format comparison before the show itself draws you into entertainment of a sadly bygone era.

Bing Crosby: Soldiering On

SIX YEARS AFTER HIS FATHER’S DEATH, Gary Crosby put out a book that luridly described incidents of disciplinary abuse, catapulting the unsuccessful actor-singer alongside Christina Crawford as mistreated celebrity-child of the century. And it toppled Bing Crosby from a very high pedestal indeed, because the legendary crooner had been acclaimed for decades as the ultimate father and family man.

That rosy picture was due in part to the Hollywood publicity machine: once Crosby began topping the ranks of popular screen actors, accounts of his family life were splashed across the newspapers and magazines, helped in no small part by the upstanding characters he typically portrayed. But there’s something in the American psyche that enjoys seeing its heroes dethroned. When I’ve mentioned to friends that I’m reading Gary Giddins’s new volume of Bing biography, the too-frequent response has been, “That Crosby was a terrible person.”

This is the second of what’s projected to be a three-volume set, covering the busy years 1940-46. Like the first volume, it wasn’t authorized by the singer’s estate, but it received a huge boost of info after Crosby’s widow read volume one and was impressed enough to share papers and other memorabilia.

Although the book is thus informed with great detail, the narrative is never swamped by it. Giddins is a scholar who avoids growing didactic; he’s a storyteller who (like his subject) knows how to make a punchline land. He provides a comforting amount of historical and cultural context for the Crosby story to make sense, yet he assumes that the reader possesses a mature knowledge of entertainment history (you should know, for example, who Larry Adler was).

Blowing through the Winds

From the Vault Dept.: Australia’s tercentenary was celebrated thirty years ago with a worldwide variety of antipodean-related events. In Albany, NY, the local symphony presented a series of concerts that featured works by Australian composers. Here’s my review of one of those.

                                                                                               

TO SAY THAT OBOIST CYNTHIA WATSON was the star of last Friday’s concert by the Albany Symphony Orchestra takes too much credit away from the other soloists who also shone, but when Watson took her solo bow at the end of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony it was after an evening of superlative work.

Richard Mills (in a more recent view)

Guest conductor Richard Mills continued the season-long tribute to Australia’s tercentenary with works by two of that country’s composers – one of them being Mills himself.

His “Fantastic Pantomimes,” written and first performed two years ago during a Melbourne Symphony Orchestra tour of Japan, is a suite for five soloists and orchestra inspired by traditions of Japanese theater. It’s a piece of gesture and feel, relying on dramatic effects of rhythm and punctuation over the traditions (especially in a concerto-like setting) of melodic progression.

The soloists, stationed star-like at points on the stage within the ensemble, were Watson, flutist Floyd Hebert, clarinetist Susan Martula, trumpeter James Morris and David Saunders, French horn.

Old-Fashioned Love

LEGENDARY MEZZO-SOPRANO CATHY BERBERIAN developed a program in the early 1970s that presented a song recital as it might have been performed in 1909. She dressed accordingly and sang numbers ranging from “The Song of the Flea” to “Father’s a Drunkard and Mother Is Dead.” It was recorded at the 1973 Edinburgh Festival, so you can hear (if you can find the LP) the twinkle in her voice as she sails from one song to the next. It’s a wonderful conceit, but, without being too sardonically self-conscious, it’s as rooted in the 70s as it is in the aughts.

There are delightful chestnuts from the early 20th century, but they typically display an intensity of sentiment that we’ve long been too hip to indulge. Thus, when you do find performances of “On the Road to Mandalay” or “Trees,” the singer finds a way to telegraph this emotional detachment – usually through some manner of camp or other exaggeration.

This was not the case when John Charles Thomas sang these songs, or John McCormack, or Leonard Warren. And it was Warren’s work that inspired baritone Brian Mulligan not only to develop his own splendid operatic voice, but also to record a collection of 21 songs written between 1877 and 1939 – and to record them with nothing but the total conviction the material deserves.

Moscow on the Mohawk

From the Food Vault Dept.: I’ve been researching Russian cuisine for an upcoming dinner, which reminded me of a review visit I made in 1996 to an ambitious Russian entity. That it ceased to exist not long thereafter should come as no surprise. The mayor referenced below was trying to close down the city’s several strip joints at the time, a task that took much longer to accomplish, and even then I think the places simply died of boredom.

                                                                                           

LATER, TRYING TO RECONSTRUCT THE EVENING, my wife and I had trouble ascertaining just what it was that pushed us into the realm of no-holds barred absurdity. The big birthday party, to be sure, and the Russian disco band. The mini-skirted, satin-bloused waitresses added an entertaining touch (and the worry that Schenectady’s fleshaphobic mayor might try to close down this place). Then there was the formidable menu, sporting such unusual items as “schti,” which our waitress wouldn’t describe because the kitchen was out of it, so why bother?

This photo has nothing to do with the article alongside.

Troika – the name refers to the team of three horses that pull a traditional Russian carriage – occupies a building that went through a few incarnations as an Indian restaurant, interrupted by a few years serving Korean food. To put a Russian restaurant there is a delightful idea. The location does seem to be a kiss of death, though.

So my first question would have been about that location. Unfortunately, my follow-up phone calls to manager Ella were unsuccessful – she was too busy with customers to talk one day, which is a good sign; but she couldn’t honor our phone appointment the next day, however, because “she’s having some trouble with the boss,” the phone-answerer whispered, explaining, “I’m just a friend who stopped by to visit today.”

Torch Song

AS THE YOUNG WOMAN OBSERVES, it was Cousin Need, who “read all that Truman Capote all the time,” who told her about Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. They are identified with spinning, measuring, and cutting, an activity we witness in the form of fuse-making. The fuses are awaiting future torchings by a professional arsonist, an unnamed but memorable character in the latest offering by New Paltz’s Denizen Theatre, proving once again that a small cast, a poetic script, and excellent acting can pack a thought-provoking plenty into a short stretch of time.

Sean Cullen and Jenny Jarnagin
Photo by Bryan Godwin

Jacqueline Goldfinger’s “The Arsonists” is getting its regional premiere here, directed by Denizen co-artistic director Ben Williamson. The experience begins as you move from the lobby into the black-box space along an overgrown, verdant pathway. And then we’re in the Florida swamp, where M, who otherwise is referred to as “Littles,” cowers in a cabin, her latest job an out-of-control failure that cost the life of her father, who taught her the business.

Triumphing in this difficult role is Jenny Jarnagin, who brings to it a sense of sorrow that’s imbued with determination to continue to struggle against everything that weighs her down – and, in this case, it’s just about everything: father, mother, identity, future. Jarnagin is a member of Manhattan’s Flea Theater, but she’s also a very committed activist who is creating theater to effect social change.

While there are no such axes to grind in “The Arsonists” (despite M’s facility with a hatchet), I would argue that any desire for social change begins within, and this show demands that you reassess yourself. If it’s going back to the Greeks to find thematic resonance, that’s only because these issues have a profoundly long-ranging provenance, and we can’t move forward without knowing our cultural past.

Bliss on a Bun

FIRST, A CONFESSION: I have only ordered burgers at this place. Yes, I need to try different things, and I've tasted some of the alternate offerings ordered by friends, but the pursuit of superior hamburgers is a calling, a mission, and I have been so called. What you’re getting at Dave’s Gourmet Burgers and More is both a gustatory and architectural marvel, a jumbo-sized creation tamed by a knife through its heart.

Photo by B. A. Nilsson

This incarnation of Dave Khan’s burger-joint concept has been operating in Schenectady for two years; his previous locations include a stint on Albany’s Fuller road. What he’s doing, and doing well, is offering an alternative to the more upscale burger chains. If you’re dining at McDonald’s, forget it: you’re not interested in flavor. But next time you’re thinking about Smashburger or Red Robin or Sonic or the like, try this place instead.

You won’t find fancy pre-fab decor – far from it. It has a couple of picnic tables in the center of the room, more tables against a wall; a reach-in cooler with drinks, a TV spitting out cable news, and walls covered with homilies, wise saws, and other such sayings. The restaurant is located in Rotterdam, on lower Broadway, with on-street parking and a few parking spaces in the rear.

If you’re not immediately welcomed by Dave, it’s because he has something on the stove. He’s the do-it-all factotum of the place, and the first thing he’s going to do is get an order of black fries cooking for you. Black fries? you wonder, and your gaze lights on a menu or wall notice informing you that unlimited black fries are part of your meal.

Mark Twain and the Dead Canary

Mark Twain Dept.: Sam Clemens gave a talk in Fort Plain, NY, on December 19, 1868, part of what he termed his “American Vandals” tour, consisting largely of his reading of excerpts from his soon-to-be-published Innocents Abroad (which became a bestseller). There he met George W. Elliott, associate editor of the Fort Plain-based Mohawk Valley Register. Elliott was known for his turgid verse, such as “Bonnie Eloise,” which became a popular song, and “The Dead Canary,” the story of a bird named Lillie who succumbs to a melancholy death after her two eggs are crushed by “mysterious fate.” The poem ends:

Ye murderers, unawed by fear,
Who bend at Herod’s crimson shrine! –
Turn once a scaleless vision here,
And view this lifeless bird of mine:
Then in your hell-born purpose pause!
Forsake the path so reckless trod;
Lest, while ye scoff at Nature's laws,
Ye feel the withering curse of God!

Elliott began deluging Twain with verse and song, trying to get some manner of praise. As Twain detailed in letters to Olivia Langdon, his soon-to-be wife, this was not about to happen.

                                                                                        

Mark Twain

To Olivia L. Langdon
21 August 1869

That thief that wrote about the dead canary & sends me so much execrable music has found me out & is publishing extravagant puffs of me & mailing the papers to me, duly marked, as usual. I shall offer a bounty for his scalp, yet. He is one of the most persistent & exasperating acquaintances I was ever afflicted with.

                                  

To Olivia L. Langdon

6 and 7 September 1869 • Buffalo, N.Y.
In Bed, Monday Night

Livy darling, I got your letter this evening, though I looked for it this morning – I had forgotten that you told me to expect the letters in the evening hereafter. Yes, dearie, I will leave this letter unsealed until I get a Salutatory to send to you in the morning.

Uncaged

From the Vault Dept.: It now seems remarkable that we had John Cage hanging out in the area for a while, but it shouldn’t be a surprise. New York’s rural reaches have attracted many well-known folk to visit, vacation, and even reside for a while. In this case, the ambitious composer-performer Carleton Clay made sure to lure notable American composers to his Catskill Conservatory concerts, which for several years were the best introduction to such music. I reviewed Cage’s best-known work in this piece; but the review below celebrates his 1985 visit to the area. 

                                                                                                    

JOHN CAGE is one of the wittiest composers since Beethoven, an opinion Cage might not enjoy only because he’s not too crazy about Beethoven’s reputation. But both of them share the dilemma of being unrecognized for their wit – that is, the wit that informs their music.

John Cage

Nobody laughs when Beethoven is performed, which is a pity. Thankfully, the audience at Saturday night’s Catskill Conservatory concert was loose enough to laugh at the music by Cage.

Finding the West Kortright Centre is challenge enough: you get off Interstate 88 near Oneonta and proceed through a number of little towns, taking some turns and ending up on an undeveloped stretch of road populated, it seems, only by farmers. In the midst of it pops up an old church, built in 1850, that has served the area for the past decade as a cultural center. It is in fact where the Catskill Conservatory began giving annual concerts that lately have spread as close as Rensselaerville and that always include the works and presence of a distinguished American composer.

This was Cage’s second appearance with the group. He’s very genial for an enfant terrible, and the man who has stressed the importance of silence when music is considered is a delightful (though rather soft-spoken) public speaker.

Send in the Crooners

From the Vault Dept.: I discovered Rosemary Clooney during her 1977 tour with Bing Crosby, when they performed at what was then the Uris Theatre in New York. Tony Bennett’s Greatest Hits was a fixture on my parents’ turntable, so at the age of six I could lip-sync to “Rags to Riches.” I saw each of them perform individually several times over the years, but here’s an account of a joint appearance at the now-demolished Coliseum in Latham, NY, in 1986.

                                                                                         

IT WOULD BE HARD TO FIND a pop-singer pairing more felicitous than Tony Bennett and Rosemary Clooney, who packed the Coliseum Theatre Tuesday night.

Bennett and Clooney in 1991

Both have justifiable claims on the elusive term “song stylist”; both have impeccable taste in songs. Both survived rocky trips through the past two decades and emerged with followings that includes many younger faces.

Clooney took the stage for the first half with “You’re Gonna Hear From Me,” sung to the swinging drive of pianist John Oddo, who plays in Woody Herman’s band. Oddo wrote most of the arrangements for Clooney’s songs. A large, locally contracted orchestra played them with zest
and polish.

An Ira Gershwin set included “I Can’t Get Started” (music by Vernon Duke) and brother George’s “Fascinating Rhythm” and “Strike up the Band.” Cole Porter’s “Why Shouldn’t I?” had a tasteful Oddo solo for accompaniment and, with the orchestra, Clooney reprised one of her biggest hits with “Hey There.”