Kelli O'Hara - Wonder in the WorldKaren Akers - Simply Styne
[IMG:L]Ghostlight Records (O'Hara); Available May 6, 2008
DRG Records (Akers); Now Available
I've said it before: There are girl singers and there are woman singers. The former are sopranos who sound girlish and innocent, and may have a snub nose like Kelli O'Hara. The latter have deeper voices, sound mature and experienced, and have a straighter nose like Karen Akers. And here we have two discs, O'Hara's Wonder in the World and Akers' Simply Styne, from two songbirds of a very different color.
That difference is even greater than the aforementioned implies. Kelli O'Hara is an Oklahoman, which is okey-dokey with me, and her material here is a bit of a return to her geographic roots. Karen Akers was born an Orth-Pallavicini, and the Pallavicinis are one of the great European aristocratic families, which is a-okay with me. On the other hand, Kelli has operatic coloratura credentials, something Karen has not.
Both have done well on Broadway. Karen was wonderful in Nine (she, rather than another actress in it, should have won the Tony), and again in Grand Hotel. Kelli has delighted in several shows, most notably in The Pajama Game (in which she was tough), The Light in the Piazza (in which she was fragile but with a staunch core) and now in South Pacific (where she is semi-tough).
So what we get in the new discs ought to be different but equally pleasing. Why is it not quite?
To my ears, most of the songs on Wonder in the World are negligible. Whether written by O'Hara herself ("Here Now," "I Love You the World," doubtful English and all), her husband, Greg Naughton ("The Sun Went Out"), or Harry Connick, Jr., with whom she co-starred in The Pajama Game, and who here acted as arranger, orchestrator, accompanist and part-time conductor and co-vocalist, they mostly leave me cold. So, too, a song each by Billy Joel and James Taylor. But they may well please you.
I do like one song, "Spooky," that took four guys to write, and Adam Guettel's "Fable." Also such standards as the Sammy Kahn-Jimmy Van Heusen "All the Way," Rodgers and Hammerstein "I Have Dreamed," and Comden-Green-Styne "Make Someone Happy," although Ms. O'Hara's excessively melancholy way with the last-named may leave someone less than happy.
Throughout, we get the O'Hara youthful charm but also a certain randomness of emphasis. The various accompaniments, ranging from small combo to sizable orchestra, are well devised and executed chiefly under Rob Berman's baton.
[IMG:R]Theoretically, I would have preferred the Akers disc, based on a well-received run at the Hotel Algonquin's Oak Room. She combines European ancestry with American upbringing, and merges the tradition of the European diseuse (proximity to parlando) with American full-throatedness to good effect.
But, alas, the conceiver and director, Eric Michael Gillett, and the music director, Don Rebic, have done Akers some dirt. For a lengthy suite, Gillett has interpolated some inane spoken dialogue effetely mouthed by Rebic (a good enough pianist), which effectively undercuts the singing.
Still, when the singer is left alone (and when she doesn't obtrude with some Piaf and a bit of spoken comment), she does very nicely by some Jule Styne favorites and lesser-known Styniana. She may be a trifle too closely miked, but even that contributes to a sense of intimacy, of singing just for you. Only some more raffish numbers from Gypsy do not quite suit her vocal persona.
Both Kelli O'Hara and Karen Akers, however, are artists, so that even these uneven discs can make more than someone happy.
