Village Vanguard
178 7th Avenue South
New York, NY
September 26, 2009
To promote her new album, Love is the Answer, Barbra Streisand sang a one-night-only gig at New York's famed jazz club The Village Vanguard. Richard Jay-Alexander, who directed Streisand's one night only gig at the Vanguard explained that “the reason Marty [Erlichman, Barbra's manager] had his eye on this particular club was because it is the only venue of its kind still standing and in business from the era during which Barbra began singing in clubs like The Lion and the Bon Soir, which no longer exist.”
Rehearsal photos (top photos and bottom left by Richard Jay-Alexander; bottom right by Chad Batka)
Streisand, her band, and director Richard Jay-Alexander rehearsed at the club on Friday, September 25th. “The band shows up for the first time,” Jay-Alexander wrote, “having rehearsed the ‘set’ of songs the prior day at a rehearsal studio and prepping more songs than we need, awaiting Barbra’s final choices, after a rehearsal.”
Pianist Tamir Hendelman was happy that the band got enough rehearsal time. “We spent 20 minutes to half an hour for each song,” he said. “We played them through, talked about what kind of flavor we wanted to give it. So by the time Barbra joined us, we didn't really need to talk about the music, since it was already there, and other things needed to be talked about at that point—you know, the lighting, this and that. But the music really flowed. That's the best way I can describe it.”
On Saturday, September 26th at Waverly Place —the back entrance to the club— there was a craft-services table, an All Mobile Video hi-def mobile video truck (the evening was captured in hi-def video for a DVD, due second quarter, 2010), and Barbra's big black trailer.
The buses which carried the lucky fans who won the Village Vanguard lottery arrived around 7:00pm. Celebrities and friends of Miss Streisand entered the club closer to show time: Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; daughter Chelsea Clinton and her fiancee; Barbra's husband James Brolin; Sarah Jessica Parker; Nicole Kidman; Donna Karan; actress Phyllis Newman; Alan and Marilyn Bergman; mogul Barry Diller; Frank Rich of the New York Times; Deborah Lee Furness [wife of Hugh Jackman]; Columbia Records chief Rob Stringer; Hollywood manager Sandy Gallin; and Tommy LiPuma, who produced Love is the Answer with Streisand and Diana Krall.
(Above: Instructions to the ticket winners, courtesy of Michel Filion)
The show began at about 8:10pm. Richard Jay-Alexander explained that video director Scott Lochmus “and his team were totally up to it and he assigned five cameras inside (which you had no idea were there) and one outside to capture arrivals, the fans, etc.”
Inside the club there were introductions by director Richard Jay-Alexander. Several people who were there during Barbra’s early Greenwich Village days spoke to the audience: Lorraine Gordon, widow of the Village Vanguard’s owner, Max Gordon; Rick Edelstein, a waiter at the Village Vanguard who arranged for Barbra's first audition at the venue, and lastly, Marty Erlichman, Barbra Streisand’s longtime manager.
Photos below by Kevin Mazur: Streisand introductions [top to bottom: Rick Edelstein, Lorraine Gordon, Marty Erlichman]
Uptown, at the Waldorf-Astoria Louis XVI room, a live video feed was shown to a small audience including some of Streisand's family, Columbia Records employees, and former New York Mayor David Dinkins.
Village Vanguard Musicians:
- Tamir Hendelman (Keys)
- Jeff Carney (Bass)
- Brian Koonin (Guitar)
- Ray Marchica (Drums)
Streisand entered the Village Vanguard through the audience and joined her four musicians on the stage, greeted by a standing ovation. On stage with her: a chair, a small round table with a single pink rose in a vase, Barbra's eye glasses, a notecard, two lozenges, and tea in paper cups—which Barbra toasted the audience with during her first song. A large TelePrompTer was set up in the back right of the room near the entrance door.
“This is hysterical,” Barbra joked as she stepped on the small stage. “Are we a box of sardines here or what?”
Before singing her first song (“Here's To Life”) Barbra addressed the small audience: “I haven't sung in the Village since 1962. And after everything I've done and everywhere I've been, I'm back to where I started. Life is a circle, right? So, this is where I was. And this is where I am now.”
Then, a little later, Streisand said, “It’s hard to have stage fright when there’s hardly any stage!”
(Right: A fan holds up the set list from the Village Vanguard)
Barbra’s Set List:
- “Here’s to Life”
- “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning”
- “Gentle Rain”
- “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most”
- “If You Go Away”
- “Where Do You Start”
- “Nobody's Heart Belongs To Me”
- “Make Someone Happy”
- “My Funny Valentine”
- “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered”
- “Evergreen”
- “Some Other Time”
- [encore]: “The Way We Were”
During the music break in “Make Someone Happy,” Streisand spoke to Stefania in the audience, who is Donna Karan's granddaughter. “Barbra’s records are all she wants to listen to,” Karan told Harper's Bazaar. Streisand, she explained, “can’t believe how Stefania can carry a tune.”
It should be noted that great care went into recording Streisand's historic Village Vanguard performance. The recording team consisted of: Jim Flynn (who provided the equipment to record the concert via his company, Jim Flynn Rentals); Jay Landers (Streisand's A&R rep at Columbia Records); and David Reitzas and Isaiah Abolin (engineers/mixers).
In an interview with MixOnline, Reitzas revealed that he used a Audio-Technica AE5400 handheld condenser mic for Streisand's vocals in the club. The mic's wire ran from inside the club to the All Mobile truck outside. In these days of wireless mics, using a wired one was actually “part of re-creating the 1960s ambience of the club,” Flynn said.
Flynn set up a mixing room at the Waldorf in order to quickly turn around the sound and video recorded for the CBS Morning Show, YouTube and AOL music channels.
End.
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