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Sam Harris: a soul singer
By JAMES D. WATTS JR. World Scene Writer
Published: 11/2/2009 2:21 AM
Last Modified: 11/2/2009 9:46 AM
Sam Harris has sung a lot of different types of music over the years — from pop standards to Broadway tunes, from original songs to contemporary hits. But no matter the type of song he performs, Sam Harris is first and foremost a soul singer.
That's not because he's done a couple of albums for Motown in his career. It's about the way Harris approaches each song he performs, vocally and emotionally full-out so that you believe every word, every note that comes out of his mouth is deeply, profoundly personal — that every song is at once a communication and a kind of exorcism.
At least, that's how it seemed Friday at the VanTrease Performing Arts Center for Education as Harris performed the first of two concerts with the Signature Symphony at Tulsa Community College.
We've seen Harris in concert several times — with orchestras, and accompanied only by his pianist and musical collaborator Todd Schroeder — and at those concerts we've heard him perform a lot of the songs that he sang Friday night. And every one of those songs, no matter how familiar to either performer or listener, Harris sang as if it were absolutely vital for him to share that melody and those words with the near-capacity crowd at Friday's show.
He joked about his propensity for sad songs after a hushed and heartbreaking rendition of Bonnie Raitt's "I Can't Make You Love Me," delicately accompanied by pianist Amy Cottingham and cellist Monty Lawson.
"I don't know why I'm drawn to songs like that — unrequited love, sorrow, torture, misery," he said. "You look at the songs I've done, and it's like one long suicide note — even the uptempo numbers are tragedy with a beat."
Some might think Harris was protesting a bit too much, but there's as much truth and humor in that statement. His opening number was the Al Jolson song, "Let Me Sing and I'm Happy," which on the surface was bright and happy-sounding, we're-gonna-have-a-good-time-tonight kind of number.
But if you know anything about Jolson himself — and Harris has been working for years to help bring a musical about Jolson's life to Broadway — that title has a slight tinge of desperation to it. And although Harris' performance of the song didn't play up that quality, you could easily imagine a slightly different arrangement bringing out Jolson's rapacious need to perform and be applauded.
Harris performed two other Jolson songs during the evening: "Swanee" and "Rockabye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody," both arranged by Dan Wooten of Tulsa. Wooten, who directs the music for a local church, did a superb job with these songs, creating some richly colored orchestrations that sounded as good as those of the legendary Peter Matz, who did most of the arrangements of the songs Harris performed.
Matz is known for creating big, bold and brassy settings to give performers such as Streisand an appropriate background against which to wail to the heavens. But Harris showed Matz's quieter side, in a version of "A Cockeyed Optimist" from "South Pacific" that slowed this usually perky song into a tender, wistful ballad.
Harris offered some of Broadway's golden age with songs by Harold Arlen, linking "I've a Right to Sing the Blues" and "Stormy Weather," then melding Cy Coleman's "There's Got to Be Something Better than This" with Stephen Sondheim's "Move On."
And to close, he sang what have become signature songs, a gospel-powered "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."
The Signature Symphony under the direction of Barry Epperley sounded great behind Harris, the sound sharply focused, the interaction between singer and musicians perfectly in sync.
In addition to Cottingham and Lawson, a few other musicians got a chance in the spotlight, as trumpeter Stephen Goforth, saxophonist Gary Linde and Rich Fisher on trombone took solos during "The Lady Is a Tramp."
The first half of the evening was more hit and miss. The performance of Saint-Saens' "Danse Macabre" was very good, with some excellent solo work by concertmaster Maureen O'Boyle, and the Signature Chorale's medley of Halloween-friendly songs was delightfully daffy — especially the wonky efforts to mimic the dance moves of Michael Jackson's "Thriller."
To give Harris more time to perform, Epperley dropped the planned "Night on Bald Mountain" by Mussorgsky.
It might have been better, though, to have dispensed with the Stokowski arrangement of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, which had a few good moments from the woodwinds and violins, but ultimately sounded as if it were one rehearsal shy of coming together.
James D. Watts Jr. 581-8478
james.watts@tulsaworld.com
By JAMES D. WATTS JR. World Scene Writer
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