Siblings in perfect harmony

Cabaret at its best is a blending of music, humor, insight, wit and pathos, delivered from each performer’s unique perspective. That’s a tall order that’s rarely filled. But it’s being served up in bountiful fashion this week by sisters Ann Hampton Callaway and Liz Callaway at Feinstein’s at the Cinegrill.

Their show, “Relative Harmony,” arriving nearly a decade after their first pairing in “Sibling Revelry,” once again features good-natured jousting between the two talented singers. In Wednesday’s performance, a clever new song by Ann, “Here Come the Callaways,” positioned the duo in an inspired lexicon of entertainment world siblings -- including such real pairings as the Andrews, Boswell and McGuire sisters, and such fanciful combinations as Charles Ives and Burl Ives.

The real heart of their music, however, is the gorgeous sound of their vocal blending. Individually, their voices are very different in timbre, style and manner. Liz, a Broadway star, has a bright, pointed sound capable of reaching from shy intimacy to impassioned high notes. Ann, better known for her jazz efforts, sings with a rich, mellow resonance stretching across a surprisingly wide range.

But the differences in timbre disappear in their often-complex unison and harmony passages. Beyond the smart repartee and the imaginative selection of material, it was this extraordinary musicality that took the show well beyond the realm of everyday cabaret.

The sisters’ rendering of Carly Simon’s “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be,” for example, was a masterful combination of subtle harmonization and dramatic insight. A sudden shift of gears into Jon Hendricks’ fast-paced vocalese on “Cloudburst” added an impressive display of musical agility (and Liz’s unexpected effectiveness with jazz phrasing). And the final number, “The Huge Medley,” was precisely that, a marvelously compiled collection of tunes ranging from Stephen Sondheim (“Every Day a Little Death”) and Irving Berlin (the contrapuntal “You’re Just in Love”) to a humorous sendup of Bernstein/Sondheim’s “West Side Story” classic “A Boy Like That.”

The Callaway sisters offered, in short, everything that cabaret can be and often is not, in one of the year’s not-to-be-missed musical events.

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Ann Hampton Callaway & Liz Callaway: ‘Relative Harmony’

Where: Feinstein’s at the Cinegrill, Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, 7000 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood

When: Today, 8 p.m. and Saturday, 8 and 10 p.m.

Price: $75 (includes show plus three-course dinner; does not include drinks, tax or gratuity). Limited number of seats available for $20 cover and two-drink minimum.

Contact: (323) 769-7269