With Warmth, Jane Olivor Melts Away a Long Absence

Singer Jane Olivor’s elusive career seems to be on an upswing. Her latest album, “Love Decides,” is her first studio recording in 17 years. Her performance career, which began impressively in the mid-’70s, largely disappeared from public view in 1983 when she took a 10-year hiatus.

So anticipation was in the air Wednesday when Olivor made her first local solo appearance in years at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center in its Club Carpenter cabaret-style setting.

Olivor’s voice was as flexible and emotionally impactful as early in her career, when she was compared to Edith Piaf and Barbra Streisand. In fact, she didn’t sound like either, in part because she was neither as penetratingly intimate as Piaf nor as over the top effusive as Streisand.

Instead, Olivor offered a middle ground, one which allowed her to rove through the warm, storytelling qualities associated with country singers, while also slipping into the sophisticated layering of European-style cabaret singing.

Working a receptive audience, she was greeted Wednesday with enthusiasm in the first few bars of all her more familiar numbers. Adding songs from the new CD, she polished off a diverse collection of tunes with a typically idiosyncratic rendering of “Some Enchanted Evening.”

Olivor’s often mentioned stage fright was present only for a few brief moments after she had taken a hand mike and walked through the crowd to shake hands. Returning to the stage, she took a deep breath, and said, to herself as well as the crowd, “I did it.”

Olivor is far too talented an artist to allow her stage apprehensions to intrude--as they reportedly have done in the past--with her career.