Soprano Shirley Ritenour, assisted by Music Director Brian Holman, at the piano, brought her wonderful cabaret show “When She Loved Me” to the Community House, thanks to the Arts Project of Cherry Grove, on August 23. Lina Koutrakos directed.
“Do I Hear a Waltz?,” our singer asked lyrically, liltingly, welcoming us with Richard Rodgers and Stephen Sondheim’s song from the show of the same name, and paired it with a joyous “If I Were a Bell,” by Frank Loesser, from “Guys and Dolls.” She continued, in a similar vein, by declaring, “It’s a Grand Night for Singing,” ending her sweeping account of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s song, from “State Fair,” with a ringing high note. She paired Harry Warren and Mack Gordon’s “Friendly Star,” a dulcet reverie from “Summer Stock,” with a caressing “Secret Love,” by Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster, from “Calamity Jane.”
Ritenour’s title song was a quietly romantic “When She Loved Me,” by Randy Newman, which she has recorded, as arranged by Rick Jensen, on a single available on Amazon and CD Baby and at www.shirleyritenour.com, with half the proceeds going to Gilda’s Club NYC through Concerned Women of the Grove. She followed this with a spoof, by Pam Peterson, of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Memory (what became of the short term?),” from “Cats,” replete with sentiments to which much of the mature audience could certainly relate.
Next came “I Will,” thoughtful and sincere, by Paul McCartney, and “Fly Me to the Moon,” by Bart Howard, full of heart, legit, then swinging. Ritenour mined a lavishly-voiced “I Had Myself a True Love,” by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, from “St. Louis Woman,” for a full measure of emotion and she and Holman found the art song lurking in Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now.” The singer gently ornamented Rodgers and Hart’s “My Romance,” from the musical “Jumbo,” and brought it to an expansive climax.
With the full moon approaching, Holman gave us a crystalline “Clair de Lune,” of Claude Debussy, as his solo. Adding her own classical contribution, Ritenour seduced us with the “Habanera,” from Georges Bizet’s “Carmen.” We then joined Ritenour in singing “Happy Birthday” to Amy, with the soprano adding high flourishes.
Arlen and Harburg’s “Over the Rainbow,” from “The Wizard of Oz,” was the singer’s fittingly grand finale and she wondered, in her restrained encore, “How to Handle a Woman?” by Lerner and Loewe, from “Camelot.”