Marcovicci’s Not So Groovy ‘60s Set

Andrea Marcovicci came up with a good idea Saturday night at UCLA’s Royce Hall: Embrace the music of the ‘60s and later as a continuing installment in the Great American Songbook.

Toward that end, she devoted the first half of her program to songs by Lennon & McCartney, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Stevie Wonder and Jimmy Webb, among others. In the second half she reached out to film and theater material from the same period via the music of Stephen Sondheim, Marilyn and Alan Bergman, Carly Simon and others.

So far so good, at least insofar as the material was concerned. Marcovicci is hardly the first to suggest that some of the work of songwriters such as Simon, Mitchell and Wonder can compare favorably with the classics of Cole Porter, Jerome Kern and Rodgers & Hart, but she deserves credit for presenting it in the context of a full evening of music.

The rub, unfortunately, was in the quality of that presentation. Start with the fact that Marcovicci chose to interpret most of the material in a pre-’60s period style, her quavery soprano and melodramatic renderings making some of the songs virtually unrecognizable. Add to that her frequent uncertainties of pitch (exacerbated by a wobbly tremolo that seemed to possess no tonal center) and a disturbing tendency to rush through phrases in pursuit of vowels that allowed her to hold long notes, regardless of their context in the melody or the lyrics.

What was most bothersome, however, was the frequent failure to grasp the essence of the songs. Marcovicci’s cabaret turns always have been more appealing for her interpretive sense of drama than for her essential musical skills. But in this program her misunderstanding of the ironies in multilayered works such as Mitchell’s “All I Want” or Wonder’s “All in Love Is Fair” suggested that Marcovicci’s presumed dramatic sense too often has actually been about herself rather than the songs.

Call it the right message, but the wrong messenger.