POP MUSIC REVIEW : Michael Feinstein Provides Right Mix at Pavilion

Has anyone since Fred Astaire looked quite as fetching in a tuxedo as Michael Feinstein? As apple-cheeked and buoyant as the juvenile lead in a ‘30s musical, he has brought credibility back to the wearing of the black tie.

Even better, he continues to be in the vanguard of a generation of young performers who are re-examining and revitalizing the great legacy of American popular song.

On Sunday, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, he made an appearance with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at a benefit for the Philharmonic musicians pension fund. Of the many facets that make up the Feinstein musical persona--cabaret singer, concert performer and musical archivist--the most outwardly communicative were on full display. Ever aware of both the audience and the setting, he assembled a show that was rich with nostalgia, seasoned it with a few humorous bits of business, and topped everything off with the luxuriant sound of the Philharmonic.

Feinstein, the concert performer, in fact, seemed to dominate most of the evening--a necessity, perhaps, given both the setting and the accompanying ensemble. In his interpretation, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” started out as a wispy, fragile melody, then burst into full-blown, march-time bloom. A Johnny Green medley wound up with Feinstein stalking the stage, singing “Body and Soul” with the extroverted energy of a juvenescent Tony Bennett.

Other moments pushed Feinstein’s efforts to be personable to uncomfortable limits. A recently recovered Allan Sherman piece that made a feebly humorous attempt to satirize the repetitive endings to works by Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert sounded dated and a bit flabby. And an MGM medley, with its requisite paeans to the glories of show business, occasionally pushed Feinstein’s platform style into uncomfortably strained mannerisms.

Fortunately, most of the program recalled a gentler, less aggressive Feinstein--one who could help an audience savor the small, as well as the large moments in a song. His reading of the complete “If I Only Had a Brain . . . a Heart . . . the Nerve” from “The Wizard of Oz,” for example, managed to capture the humor and poignancy of Yip Harburg’s lyrics with a performance that was superbly understated.

Two Gershwin tunes--”They Can’t Take That Away From Me” and “The Girl I Love” (featuring the first West Coast singing of Ira Gershwin’s variant lyrics)--as well Rodgers & Hart’s almost perfect “Isn’t It Romantic” also recalled Feinstein’s exquisitely modulated cabaret work. In their better moments, they reduced the overflow auditorium to the intimate dimensions of an East Side bistro.

Also making an occasional, welcome appearance was Feinstein the archivist, the dedicated researcher in the minutiae of the Broadway musical theater. His provocative insights--a mini-presentation of numbers from the Hollywood Bowl memorial concert for Gershwin, and a recollection that “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” lost the 1937 Academy Award to “Sweet Leilani” were typical examples--testified to a never-ending fascination with the history of American song.

That he did all this while communicating with the effervescent charm of a college senior voted Most Likely to Succeed is an intrinsic part of his message. This is one Feinstein the voters of California can all agree upon.