By Andrew Poretz***Popular cabaret and jazz performer Susan Mack returned to Birdland for a single, sold-out performance of her new show, ‘Tis Autumn. And who couldn’t “fall” for Susan Mack? The new show incorporated 
many songs with autumnal themes, arranged by the brilliant musical director and pianist Tedd Firth, who accompanied the singer with bassist David Finck, drummer Eric Halvorson and Geoff Burke playing tenor saxophone and flute.
This writer has followed Mack’s late-stage music career since her nights at open mics, and has reviewed her multiple times in the past four years. She has evolved and improved consistently with each appearance. After many shows directed by Lina Koutrakos, Mack self-directed ‘Tis Autumn. As the saying goes, the student has become the master.
The set opened with perhaps an obvious choice, “Autumn in New York” (Vernon Duke), including the rarely sung verse, with the main sections of the song arranged as a jazz waltz. On a swinging arrangement of “Old Devil Moon” 
(Burton Lane, Yip Harburg), Mack showed impeccable rhythm and timing, adding just a bit of scat near the end. With “Hum Drum Blues” (Oscar Brown Jr.), the singer displayed more jazz chops in techhniques she learned from the late Sheila Jordan. This tune was one among the best numbers in the set. Not only was there some hot interplay between Burke and Finck, but Mack revealed herself to be facile in the blues idiom,
For “Watch What Happens” (Michel Legrand, Norman Gimbel), Mack started with a rubato bridge (“Cold, no I can’t believe your heart is cold”), performing the rest of the song as a gentle rhumba, with Burke on flute. Her jazziest number of the set was the title song, “’Tis Autumn” (Henry Nemo), to which she added some scat singing. Although not a natural-born jazz singer, she has grown more gratifyingly comfortable in the style with experience.
The set’s big highlight was quite a surprise. Back in her school years, Mack wrote a poem, “October,” which was published in 1976—and Firth recently set the poem to music as a gift to her. Though the piece could stand on its own, they paired it with “When October Goes,” a more famous song that has a nearly matching story. Johnny Mercer wrote the lyrics before his death (also in 1976), and his widow subsequently gave them to Barry Manilow to develop into a song. The medley was a magical pairing. It was also the first time she performed the new composition in public.
Mack performed more of her lyrics, including special lyrics added to a fun medley of “Frim Fram Sauce” (Redd Evans, Joe Ricardel) and “Everybody Eats When They Come to My House” (Cab Calloway, Allie Wrubel). She also wrote both the music and lyrics for “This Too Shall Pass,” which she wrote for her 
mother, based on one of her mother’s favorite expressions. (Her 96-year-old mother was beaming from the audience.) The excellence of the song points to future promise for the singer as a songwriter “A Night in Tunisia”—a 1942 instrumental by Dizzy Gillespie with lyrics added in 1957 by vocalese master Jon Hendricks—took Mack firmly back to the jazz world with a very strong vocal.
Closer was “That’s All” (Bob Haymes, Alan Brandt), with a gratifying arrangement by Nancy Marano. ‘Tis Autumn was a warm, lovely program, in which the singer can add songwriter to her resumé. Her commitment to her craft continues to yield dividends, confirmed by her ability to sell out houses at Birdland. Might this disciplined and focused artist sell out larger venues? That could very well happen.
Photos by Kevin Alvey
