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Reviews/Articles
CJOnline Entertainment/The Topeka Capital-Journal
Published
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Review -- Diva soars at Topeka Jazz
Workshop
By Chuck Berg
Special to The Capital-Journal
Kathleen
Holeman is the real deal, a singer who can sing.
Holeman,
who is from St. Joseph, Mo., but now lights up stages all over Kansas
City, on Sunday regaled a full house of Topeka Jazz Workshop patrons
with a beautifully balanced program that had the crowd pleading for
more.
In her
ear-grabbing opener, an insinuating reframing of "Moondance," Holeman
made the Van Morrison classic her own. Coolly snapping her fingers, her
waist-length blonde hair flowing gently to the band's insistent beat,
the burgundy-sheathed chanteuse declaimed with a sultry fire-and-ice air
at once musically and dramatically arresting.
Holeman
has a penchant for verses, those flowing, rubato-esque declamations that
Broadway tunesmiths once wrote to set a scene. In the year that Lucky
Lindy crossed the Atlantic, Irving Berlin crafted one of the greatest of
all Tin Pan Alley verses to introduce the now iconic "Blue Skies." It's
a gem of a backdrop, hopeful and yet poignantly bittersweet.
In
addition to possessing a great "instrument" capable of touching the
stars, Holeman is a consummate storyteller. Although Berlin's ode to
optimism opens on a minor chord, clouds gave way to sunshine hen Holeman
gave the lyric "blue days, all of them gone" an upbeat nudge.
Perfect
support came from guitarist Rod Fleeman, pianist Roger Wilder, bassist
Bob Branstetter and drummer Al Wiley. Their insouciant sense of swing
was in happy evidence everywhere, whether a peppy retro take of "Get
Happy" or a lush balladic caress of "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your
Life?"
There was
even a tip-of-the-hat to America's pastime. However, after the fin-de-siecle
verse and the rousing "One, two, three strikes you're out" refrain, this
"Take Me Out to the Ballgame" concluded as a protest against the
despoiling of the game by big money courtesy of Holeman's clever and
pointed lyric.
Other
tunes receiving the Holeman treatment included the lovely "Gentle Rain,"
a show-stopping "Mood Indigo" and Leon Russell's exotic "Masquerade."
Proving that she was a "canary" who also knows something about music,
she sat down at the piano to play and sing her way through an inspired
romp in tandem with guitarist Fleeman through "Exactly Like You."
Holeman
also included a heart-breaking treatment of the title track of her debut
album "Don't You Wonder?" -- an atmospheric lament whose noirish
overtones suggested the tangled romantic webs of such melancholy
Hollywood fare as Bogart and Bacall's "The Big Sleep."
The
afternoon came to a happy close when Holeman and company lifted the
Ramada Inn Downtown's stage with a salsa-spiced "That's All." Again, the
crowd stood and cheered. Brava, Holeman! |
