By Andrew Poretz***Soprano Jessica Fishenfeld is a bit of a musical Zelig. She’s been an opera star, a musical theater marvel and even a jazz singer. She’s performed with the New York City Opera, appeared as a singing aerialist on “America’s Got Talent” and has acted opposite Luke Kirby. She has a gorgeous voice with a face to match, and is funny. “Singer” isn’t even the first skill she lists on her website.
With Sunny Side Up, the sold-o
ut Birdland audience was in for a treat with Fishenfeld’s final New York performance. (The star and her husband, Scott Joiner, will relocated to Los Angeles this summer.) Fishenfeld presented an eclectic mix of standards and songs by current composers.
Dressed in a sunny print dress that complemented her curly blonde hair and sunny disposition, the singer was accompanied by the excellent trio of pianist Matthew Sheens, bassist Sam Zerna and drummer Peter Manheim. The star opened with a medley of Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm” and her own “Sunny Side Up.” She engagingly told her story, and of her realization that opera no longer brings her the same joy as it once did. She shifted from opera to Broadway and Hollywood. “I no longer identify as an opera singer,” Fishenfeld declared, though she made strategic use of her operatic head voice throughout the performance.
The rare verse to the Rodgers and Hart standard “It Might as Well Be Spring,” sung rubato, piggybacked on Fishenfeld’s remark about opera. “The things I used to like I don’t like anymore. I want a lot of other things I’ve never had before.” This spring song was uniquely paired with Tom Lehrer’s, “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,” the latter of which was delightfully macabre. Fishenfeld is at her most endearing with this type of material.
Fishenfeld also spoke about her lifelong friend and her bouts with breast cancer. Then, as if to undo any pall she might have put over the mood, she sang a moving rendition of Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile.” In an intriguing lyric change, “You’ll see the sun come shining through” she swapped “light” with “sun,” which somehow felt more spiritual in this context.
During the pandemic, Fishenfeld explained that she became “video editor to the stars,” including cabaret great Ann Hampton Callaway. She performed Callaway’s composition, “The Moon Is a Kite,” as a jazz waltz, powerfully conveyingg the song’s emotionally connected lyrics.
Fishenfeld met her husband when they worked together on a movie of an opera he wrote. The couple had a first date that lasted for three days, by which time she needed to know the really important question: how did he like his eggs? The story was a great setup for the playfully delicious “”Eggs,” a jazzy song by Amanda McBroom and Michelle Brourman.
The funniest song and a terrific highlight was “Dog,” by Susan Werner, which she previewed earlier last week in The Lineup With Susie Mosher. This musical realization that she could never be with a man who kissed his dog on the mouth was hysterically funny and perfectly executed by Fishenfeld. She kept the comedy going with her brief own parody, “Ding Dong Your Boyfriend’s Gay.”
Though Fishenfeld found “the one” in her talented husband, perhaps the sweetest moment in the show was a stunning rendition of the beautiful, early Stephen Sondheim song, “So Many People” (from Saturday Night). Fishenfeld was exquisite in voice, delivery and phrasing.
If this show had the equivalent of an “11 o’clock number,” it was Fishenfeld’s “optimism medley,” an opportunity for the star to flaunt the best of her formidable talents set in one piece. The medley included easy choices including “Put On a Happy Face” and “Whistle a Happy Tune,” which reached a giddy conclusion with a pair of Spamalot tunes (“Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” and “Find Your Grail”). She even did some impressive scat singing!
In the sweetest moment of the show, Fishenfeld closed the set with a surprise duet with her husband on James Taylor’s “You’ve Got a Friend,” with help from the audience.
Photos by Jaci Berkopec
