In her astonishing new show at the Metropolitan Room, "New York State of Mind: The Songs of Billy Joel," Pamela Lewis both did admirable justice to the prolific composer/performer and re-interpreted his songs as singularly her own. Offering new, vibrant, self-created arrangements of 15 Joel compositions—both familiar and relatively obscure—from 1971 to 1986, Lewis changed tempos, instrumentation and occasionally lyrics. Above all, she performed the set in her own self-confident style. She could be either forceful or subtle in singing—in just the right balance—but she was always organic, smooth, compelling, and vocally on target. Often it seemed as if we were hearing the songs for the first time, perhaps especially on "This Is the Time." Her staging, with a big assist from director Barb Jungr, and her masterful backup quartet could hardly have been better. Musical director and pianist Bill Heller, bassist Ritt Henn, trumpeter Marcus Parsley, and Lewis’s husband John Hurley on guitar were seamlessly complicit in this old/new transformation. The bravest decision in compiling this foursome was to include a trumpeter instead of the more conventional quartet musician, a drummer. Parsley was particularly effective on "The Stranger," "Zanzibar," and the encore/title song "New York State of Mind." Nobody missed the drums.
Lewis had fashioned just the right balance between chat and singing, and they were equally authentic. She made a running joke of the fact that she and fellow Long Island native Joel had never met ("Like everyone else on Long Island, I know someone who knows him"), but you could believe her when she said "Billy and I go way back. His music is in my soul." Lewis and Hurley still live on Long Island, by choice, and it was there that she long plied her singing career at sports bars and as a wedding singer. She has made a few forays into the Manhattan cabaret scene over the last five years, with other programs, but this engagement had the feel of a stunning debut on this island, and a big welcome to the cabaret first team.
From her first song, "The Entertainer," Lewis made it clear that she would not be merely "doing" Billy Joel songs, but intelligently selecting numbers from his overwhelming body of work to tell her story. Many other Joel songs might have served to express her thoughts on such topics as choices and trust, but not this artfully. Besides, as she explained to her enthusiastic audience "I can’t sing them all, folks, we’d be here all night." There was so much more to the contrast between her approach and Joel's originals than the fact of her standing at a microphone or sitting on a stool versus his singing while playing the piano. Lewis’s slower tempos on "My Life," a pairing of "Piano Man" and "Captain Jack," and "You May Be Right (I May Be Crazy)" allowed for a more careful assimilation of those songs’ meanings, both for artist and audience. Her most dangerous staging choice—and therefore doubly effective when it worked so brilliantly—was for "Just the Way You Are," perhaps Joel’s best-known and best song. Lewis sang the first half of the song with her back to fully half the audience and her eyes and voice aimed only at her husband, Hurley, who played the haunting, sole accompaniment on his guitar. For the second half of the song, Lewis turned to embrace the audience, and Hurley was joined only by Henn on bass, leaving the piano and trumpet mute. Wow.
Lewis will be performing this show at least four more times throughout 2015. If you care at all about the art of cabaret and its ability to illuminate a life, I beg you not to miss it.
Metropolitan Room – January 16, 17, March 7, May 8; August 21, November 20
