By Bart Greenberg***Take one cabaret star, one iconic performer, a sprinkle of three excellent musicians, mix them together and you get magic. The elegant Billy Stritch paid tribute to one of America’s greatest balladeers with his program at 54 Below, Billy Stritch: My Year With Tony Bennett – Celebrating 100 Years of an Icon (the title was the 
only clumsy thing about the evening). The sold-out audience rightly loved every minute of the evening, enhanced with some lovely projections, personal stories (the singer meeting Stritch’s mother was a real tearjerker) and a great set list.
The chosen songs from Bennett’s catalogue featured some of the great standards: the inevitable “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” (George Cory, Douglass Cross)) and a few obscurities such as “Yesterday I Heard the Rain” (Armando Manzanero, Gene Lees), a lush romantic and bittersweet number. All were given a polished and deeply-felt interpretation by Stritch, with expert backup by Andy Ezrin on keys, Michael O’Brien on bass and Eric Halvorson on drums. Ezrin at times manned the piano, allowing Stritch to move around the stage and avoid the static quality of some shows wherein the singer is trapped at the 88 keys for the entire time.
Each of the numbers displayed a different aspect of Stritch’s considerable skill, for the gentle elegance of “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” to the swinging joy of 
“Stepping Out With My Baby” (Irving Berlin), which began with the singer and bassist O’Brien playfully tossing the melody back and forth until the band came flooding in for full excitement. Ezrin got a chance to dazzle with “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” (Harry Warren, Al Dubin). “The Trolley Song” (Ralph Blane, Hugh Martin) gave the singer a chance to equally celebrate Bennett and another of his favorites, Judy Garland, with breathless delivery.
Throughout, Stritch’s wit and charm were evident, as was his big heart. His rendition of “All the Things You Are” (Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II), the song Bennett dedicated to Stritch’s mom, was a truly moving moment. There were many more emotive touchstones throughout the evening, such as “The Good Life” (Sacha Distel, Jack Reardon) and the final selection “This Is All I Ask” (Gordon Jenkins). Every moment of the show reflected both Stritch’s admiration for Bennett and his own love affair with both this great music and the audience. A golden show.
Photos by Bart Greenberg
