Mcgovern’S Singing Commands Attention

Symphony Superpops with Maureen McGovern Saturday, April 8, Opera House

There was one pure musical moment, toward the end of Saturday night’s Spokane Symphony Superpops program.

Maureen McGovern, powerfully amplified, already had belted out half a dozen tunes from American movies and musicals. Suddenly, unannounced, her “backup band,” composed of the Spokane Symphony with lots of supplementary brass, drum set, and piano, stopped playing. We heard a soft thump and then McGovern’s voice rose all alone from the stage.

She was singing “Somewhere, Over the Rainbow,” a capella and unmiked. From my seat at the back of the enormous hall, I felt the audience fall absolutely silent, its attention riveted on McGovern’s incredible voice.

Her fans think of McGovern as a ballad singer and a Gershwin interpreter. But for most of us, McGovern’s name is identified with recent American pop music. Her career was launched on the huge success of “The Morning After,” the theme song from the movie, “The Poseidon Adventure.” The song won awards and sold millions. No other singer has successfully covered it.

That makes McGovern’s accomplishment singular. She has seared unmemorable songs from forgotten shows into our collective musical consciousness.

She does it with her singular voice.

Think about “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from “The Wizard of Oz.” Its melody leaps across octaves, slides up and down tiny intervals, and warbles in a simultaneously naive and seductive way. McGovern, appropriately, made this deceptively difficult tune seem child’s play.

Not only is her voice powerful from the bottom of the alto to the top of the soprano range, it’s also nimble and colorful. It can go as raspy as a torch singer’s or as smooth as Perry Como’s or as spicy as that of her mentor, Mel Torme.

She’s had some dubious associations, singing in movies like “The Towering Inferno” and “Airplane.” Still, her basic musical good sense is impeccable.

One of the best moments in Saturday’s concert was what she called a “McGoverned medlette of McGrand proportions,” on songs by the lyricist duo of Alan and Marilyn Bergman.

It was medley at its best, since McGovern gave each song its substantial due. Her nimble voice changed colors from one excerpt to the next.

At its worst, medley is the secret weapon of terror with which the inventors of Muzak have bludgeoned innocent shoppers and elevator riders in McGovern’s lifetime. Unfortunately, that sort of medley also made an appearance Saturday night.

For the first half of the concert, before McGovern took the stage, conductor Fabio Mechetti chose three medleys of music by three vastly different American melodists: Victor Herbert, Irving Berlin and Stan Kenton. In the hands of the Muzakers, going incognito under the title “Arr.,” these three greats came out indistinguishable from one another - the aural equivalent of pressed meat.