By Marcia Blondin***Day #1 Fiesta de Cabaret, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico: Mark Hartman and Natalie Douglas.
Something incredible happens when close, dear friends get together on stage to perform. Those times when the accompanist waits for the soloist to dry her tears and take a deep cleansing breath or two, there is a chemical change that every heart in the room feels.
Musical director and brilliant pianist Mark Hartman brought to Vallarta the woman he met in NYC in 1997 to sing with him and participate in the first Fiesta de Cabaret. Natalie Douglas has been tagged globally with every superlative in the English language, and I can’t find words unique enough to describe her better than what has already been written.
Her song repertoire last night in the Casa Karma Red Room was from the Sixties, meaning protest songs in the purest sense of that genre. With Vietnam War anthems and multiple assassination rages to choose from, Natalie settled on poignant over angry, and sweet over bitter lyrics. She is too young to have lived through those times, but her delivery and respectfulness for the lyrics had me riveted to every word she sang. And I remembered every word and heard them for the first time last night.
Natalie has a powerhouse voice and a formidable presence on stage yet delicately, like a whisper of air, sang “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” Her history of each song proved her to be an industrious researcher with funny, off-the-cuff humor used when appropriate.
I will look for Natalie’s return to Vallarta in January; what songs she will sing won’t matter. To me, the familiarity or strangeness of the songs won’t matter either. They will all be brand new and pristine as fresh snowflakes falling from Natalie Douglas’s heart into yours.
