MUSIC REVIEW : Bill Wright Proves Satisfying, If Not Stellar

Singer-pianist Bill Wright’s clear baritone and ingratiating keyboard manner have won a loyal, steadily growing audience at La Jolla’s Top O’ the Cove restaurant. Saturday night, he brought his popular repertory of songs of the American musical theater home to the stage at the Lyceum Theatre.

If it wasn’t a completely magical evening--Wright needs to make a few more adjustments for the larger, more formal concert environment--most of the audience of about 300 people were more than satisfied.

Wright applied his bright, moderate-size voice with telling effect to the comic and dramatic songs of musical theater and movie musicals. From the exuberant, never-give-up trouper’s anthem “Broadway Baby” to the ache and yearning poignancy of Irving Berlin’s “Change Partners,” he inhabited the lyrics almost always with grace and skill.

Unlike his more intimate recitals at Words & Music Bookstore in Hillcrest, where he focuses an entire program on a single composer, Saturday’s concert covered a gamut from Cole Porter, Jerome Kern and George Gershwin to Leonard Bernstein, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Stephen Sondheim.

Clearly, Wright is a Broadway baby himself who delights in offering rarely heard gems along with the classics such as Porter’s “You’re the Top” and Gershwin’s “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.” “I’m Throwing a Ball Tonight” bounced with the wry self-deprecation that Porter infused in his more well-known pieces.

Similarly, we were introduced to Porter’s “Let’s Not Talk about Love,” a looping catalogue song in the sophisticated patter of W. S. Gilbert, taken from the 1941 film “Let’s Face It.”

Wright gave a stylish treatment to an infectious up-tempo piece by Sondheim, “With Your Love, What More Do I Need,” scored for a luckless 1956 musical called “Saturday Night.”

Wright interpreted Sondheim’s “Old Friends” from the musical “Merrily We Roll Along” twice, opening with it as a light and bouncy greeting, then probing the tune’s bittersweet heart as the final song of the evening.

He fared less well with Bernstein’s “Something’s Coming,” from “West Side Story,” failing to convey the song’s intensity and anticipation. Maybe Wright gives the tune a better reading in more intimate confines. Several other pieces also lacked conviction, such as “The Last Time I Saw Paris,” which may also have suffered from the change of venue.

Wright’s fearless comic mugging as the Cowardly Lion partly saved “If I Only Had a Brain” from “The Wizard of Oz,” but it didn’t quite come off. An effort to give a semi-staged rendition of “Franklin Shepard Inc.” from “Merrily We Roll Along” was sabotaged by a lack of vocal amplification.

The low point of the concert was reached with the ballads. With all the great movie and musical theater ballads, it was surprising that Wright picked so many that lacked both melody and emotion. Pieces like “My Romance,” “The Night It Had to End” and “I’m Here” just weren’t there.

For the second half of the two-hour concert, bassist Tom Azarello and drummer Dave Berry joined, adding color and rhythmic brightness. The second half also featured a number of film tunes performed by Fred Astaire. Wright’s renditions of the ballads “Change Partners” and “The Way You Look Tonight” captured all the glamour aand romance associated with the Astaire oeuvre.

Wright’s presence in San Diego--he moved here four years ago from Los Angeles--adds to the growing number of San Diego musicians, from classical to jazz, who are not just good, but great players and singers. It’s encouraging to see Wright parlay his regular piano bar gig in La Jolla to occasional recitals at Words & Music, where he is one of the most popular attractions.

And now he’s taken another step with a Carnegie Hall-style concert. Maybe it will encourage others to do the same.