Shirley Horn Bewitches, With Eccentricities and All

Shirley Horn can be a demanding performer. Demanding in her insistence that an audience resonate with the extraordinarily slow pace she often chooses for her ballads; demanding in her willingness to break a mood she has created to express annoyance about a sound system; demanding in the occasional lapses of memory that offset the impact of a song.

All those demands were present Wednesday night in the opening performance of Horn’s two-week run at the Hollywood Roosevelt Cinegrill. With the additional problem of a set that was so short that the full-house crowd was mystified when the Grammy-nominated Horn and her musicians simply left the stage after 45 minutes without an encore.

Yet, despite those demands, despite the brevity of her performance, there were moments in Horn’s program that made it all worthwhile. At a time when a unique personal identity is rare in jazz, she is an incomparable original.

This was especially apparent in her rendering of Rodgers & Hart’s “Ten Cents a Dance.” Singing the rarely heard verse, as well as the more familiar chorus, Horn had the audience spellbound, her interpretation a stunningly dramatic combination of words and music. Rare for jazz-based singers, she brings a richly layered storytelling quality to everything she sings, and in this number she was at her best.

She followed it, in medley fashion, with an equally impactful, if unfamiliar, ballad titled “Here in This Hotel,” then shifted into a slow, insinuating groove for “Our Love Is Here to Stay.”

The combination of tunes was the centerpiece of Horn’s set, supplemented by an opening romp through “I’m Just Fooling Myself” and a slow bossa nova version of “How Am I to Know?” But a brief period of forgetfulness on “Where Do You Start?” seemed to throw her off stride. (As she struggled to recall the words, she muttered, “I’m most glad Johnny’s not here,” referring to the song’s composer, Johnny Mandel, even though the words were provided by Alan and Marilyn Bergman.)

It was a peculiar ending to a presentation that had started so well, in spite of Horn’s initial annoyance with the audio. But, as with most divas, acceptance of performance eccentricities is simply part of the price for hearing such exquisite music.

* Shirley Horn at the Cinegrill in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, 7000 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. (323) 769-7273. Tonight and Saturday at 9 and 11 p.m., $35 per person; Wednesday at 9 p.m., $30 per person; Thursday at 9 and 11 p.m., $30 per person; next Friday and Feb. 26 at 9 and 11 p.m., $35 per person. $10 minimum purchase (waived for diners at Theodore’s Restaurant).