POP MUSIC REVIEWS : Modern-Day Minstrel Sets Mood at the Wadsworth

Canadian chanteuse Jane Siberry has a voice of such warmth and grace that she could turn “Mary Had a Little Lamb” into a melody of sensuous uplift. In fact, she did exactly that at the Veterans Wadsworth Theater on Monday, mixing some musical ephemera into a generous set of ethereal, jazz-inflected art-pop. By the time Siberry closed with a wistful reading of “Moon River,” she’d managed to make the cavernous theater feel like the coziest of cabarets.

Backed by the finely nuanced playing of an exceptionally adept quartet, the singer seemed entirely at ease in her first full band tour in six years. Her set, which began with some “Moon River” variations and snippets of “West Side Story,” was casually paced and playfully delivered.

Searching for the point of a Siberry tune isn’t often a fruitful endeavor; she’s more of a mood weaver than a storyteller, but those moods can be captivating. Her poetically concise descriptions of honeybees and starlit caravans sometimes near preciousness, but there is also an oddball sense of humor in her work that, in the live setting, generates a great deal of good will.

While Siberry presented originals such as “Calling All Angels” and “See the Child” with transporting intensity, her sly comic instincts took over during some non-originals. “My Favorite Things” got a particularly twisted workout, and Siberry’s extensive, emphatically breathy, gender-flipped “Girl From Ipanema” was as sultry and musically satisfying as it was hilarious.