POP MUSIC REVIEW : A Vintage Voice Opens Cerritos Arts Center

What better way to inaugurate a new performing arts facility than to bring in the Voice himself?

A decade ago, Frank Sinatra was the premiere attraction at the opening of the remodeled Universal Amphitheatre, and on Wednesday the spiffy new Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts made precisely the right choice by starring Sinatra at its elegant grand opening.

The veteran show-biz legend, 77, was fighting a raw throat, but still managed to rally his voice in a surprisingly demanding program of songs.

“I’ve only got about half a throat, right now, but I’ll have a whole one by the time I’m finished,” Sinatra said as he worked his way through the easy-going rhythms of “Come Rain or Come Shine.”

And he was right. After a few belts from his trademark glass of bourbon and an airing out of his vocal cords on “For Once in My Life” and “The Lady Is a Tramp,” his voice did, indeed, improve.

By the time he reached the atmospheric, late-night groove of “One for the Road,” the seductive Sinatra sound--one of the most extraordinarily affecting timbres in pop music history--was coming across in fine form.

Sinatra has tended in recent years to emphasize the swinging rhythms of his ‘50s and ‘60s recordings, and Wednesday was no exception. Aside from the obvious familiarity of his readings of “Come Fly With Me,” “Strangers in the Night” and “Witchcraft,” this also clearly reflected a desire to place as little strain as possible on his voice.

Backed by a superb orchestra (conducted by Frank Sinatra Jr.) and brilliantly crafted arrangements from Don Costa, Frank Foster, Gordon Jenkins, et al., Sinatra was able to highlight the aspect of his skills that has never deserted him--his remarkable sense of phrasing, an ability to sing a line with the kind of accenting that produces its greatest rhythmic impact.

This time out, however, Sinatra stretched the envelope with splendid renditions of the patriotic “The House I Live In” and Rodgers & Hammerstein’s marvelous “Soliloquy” (from “Carousel”). It was vintage Voice, an utterly unique reworking of familiar material and precisely the sort of interpretations that make Sinatra one of a kind.

The Cerritos Center’s staging--which can be adjusted to five different configurations--was placed in an 1,850-seat arena setting, with Sinatra working on a center dais. The multilevel boxes on all four sides, reminiscent of the intimate qualities of Elizabethan theaters, brought every audience member to within 100 feet of the Chairman of the Board.

Sinatra, whose sold-out engagement continues through Sunday, made the most of the opportunity for close interaction with his listeners, and the room’s acoustics, despite the possible hazards of a high ceiling and the potentially reflective flat sides of the audience boxes, produced strikingly natural sound.

It remains to be seen how effective the sound will be when the room is arranged differently, and the music is unamplified. But for pop music, at least, the Cerritos Center provides an impressive, highly personalized presentation forum.

Sinatra’s penultimate offering was “My Way,” a song whose aggressively self-focused lyrics have come to symbolize the feisty, success-oriented aspects of his career. But one suspects that the aging crooner, somewhat more mellow, perhaps a bit more accepting now, was best represented by the words of Gordon Jenkins’ “This Is All I Ask”: “Let the music play as long as there’s a song to sing, and I will be younger than spring.”

NEIGHBORHOOD FLING

Rain didn’t stop the star-studded crowd that helped Cerritos inaugurate its new theater. F28