By Marilyn Lester***Take a room full of A-list Broadway, cabaret and jazz stars, add an uber-dynamic performer to the mix, and watch what happens: an event so full of energy and power that a big chunk of the entertainment community was still talking about it days later. That’s the magic that was created when singer-actor-entertainer Nicolas King brought Celebrating the Music, Memory, & Arrangements 
of Mike Renzi to 54 Below. The force of rocket fuel paled by comparison. Had the birth of King and the death of Sammy Davis, Jr. not overlapped by a year, one might make a case for reincarnation. But a torch was certainly passed and King is absolutely cut from the same Davis cloth of megatalent, charisma and sheer likeability, never ceasing to give 1,000 percent. And PS, they both began performing professionally at age four.
On April 28, the date of the show, King’s mentor, pal, musical soulmate and music director of 14 years, the late Mike Renzi, would have turned 85. Opening the show with a boffo, swinging “Yes I Can/I Can See It” (Charles Strouse, Lee Adams/Harvey Schmidt, Tom Jones), King traveled deftly to a balladic “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” (Bob Crewe, Bob Gaudio), offering it as a story song, then moving the arc into a scat chorus. Here King demonstrated up front the genius of Renzi as an arranger—but the master also had, in King, the clay to work with. As the show progressed, King artfully and organically, with deep feeling, rolled out the story of their teamwork, along with the history of Renzi and his remarkable career.
Mike Renzi—composer, mu
sic director, pianist, jazz musician—was a real New Englander, a graduate of the Boston Conservatory (1973) and Berklee College of Music (1974) and firmly rooted in his native Rhode Island, no matter where he might roam professionally. Although he worked with a list of celebrities long enough to fill a “Who’s Who,” Renzi was strongly identified with Peggy Lee and Mel Tormé and had a long Emmy Award-winning turn as musical director of “Sesame Street.” Similarly, King never roams far from his Rhode Island roots (nor does his grandmother, noted singer/vocal coach, Angela Bacari). When King was 17 he and Renzi met cute in a Rhode Island pizzeria; destiny was served and a remarkable collaboration was born till Renzi unexpectedly passed away in September, 2021.
An off-the-charts creative collaboration became a given, notable in “Johnny One Note,” not one of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s most brilliant work, but the audition song of a precocious King at 
age seven. The Renzi-King team transformed this tired novelty tune into a work with glorious new life. Preceding a video of Renzi at work, King got into the blues with “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most” (Tommy Wolf, Fran Landesman), paired with “Just One of Those Things” (Cole Porter). A streak of scat off the hook came with a slow entry into the fun, novelty tune, “Ding-Dong, the Witch Is Dead” (Harold Arlen, Yip Harburg) moving to super-speed swing.
And as much as King can swing he can also drill deep into the heart of a lyric: he’s a superb storyteller. His interpretation of “(Ah, the Apple Trees) When the World Was Young,” originally a French composition by Philippe-Gérard with lyrics by Angèle Vannier and in English by Johnny Mercer, captured the aching nostalgia and deep feeling of the piece perfectly. Another scat-fest in “Pick Yourself Up” (Jerome Kern, Dorothy Fields) earned King a standing ovation. A highlight of Celebrating was the appearance of fellow jazz sensation, 
Gabrielle Stravelli for a duet of Nancy Wilson’s “I Wish I’d Met You.” It was time for another round of tissues with the all-too-soon closer, a carefully-crafted and sincere “Lucky to Be Me” (Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden and Adolph Green) that brought an exhilarating evening to its joyful conclusion.
The band was a trio of gifted, first-call musicians in the outstanding drummer Mark McLean and longtime Renzi-King bassist, Alan Bernstein, plus music director Tedd Firth. This writer has long acknowledged Firth as a pianist-arranger of brilliance who can take his place among the best of them. But here, Firth, especially in his solo features, added another jewel to his crown. He played the arrangements created by another genius, but with his own layer of soul and respect, which bonded the two creatives so beautifully together.
Photos by Magda Katz; see her video of the show here.
