Here’s a short report on a recent unique event: The Rebecca Luker Songbook: A Benefit Concert. The reason behind it involves Broadway regular Luker’s life and death. Still mourned by theatergoers as one of the theater’s most beloved sopranos, she died in 2020 after losing a prolonged fight against amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
A large part of that valiant fight was as an activist calling attention — with husband Danny Burstein — to the terminal disease and to her serving as a representative of Project ALS, which is the concert’s beneficiary. Even in death, then, soprano Luker continues to fight for her cause.
In life, Luker appeared in roles that include several of the classic musical theater figures, characters whose first names are enough to identify them: Magnolia, Maria, Christine. She sang in cabaret and at concerts. One of this reporter’s favorite Luker appearances took place at 54 Below when she devoted herself to the Jerome Kern songbook. In something like 90 minutes, she proved that Kern and his top-drawer lyricists could have been writing their songs exclusively for her. Luker often said she was devoted to Kern and had sung his songs since childhood.
One of Luker’s favorite abiding off-stage activities — a memorable and admirable one — was encouraging established and aspiring composers to write for her At this endeavor she’d had Joel Fram — who narrated the concert and produced it with Annette Jolles, its director — send out something like 800 of her best-loved poems for musical settings. The surprise, joy, and fun of the benefit was the inclusion of 24 sung by a dozen sopranos and one baritone. (Fram noted that of those 800 about 350 were love poems. Of the many subsequently musicalized, he said, only seven were positive about love, which certainly suggests something to think about.)
The sopranos performing, all admirably during the nearly two-hour proceedings, were Julie Benko, Mikaela Bennett, Andréa Burns, Carolee Carmello, Nikki Renée Daniels, Laura Darrell, Ali Ewoldt, Marina Kondo, Emilie Kouatchou, Scarlett Strallen, Jessica Vosk, and Sally Wilfort. The baritone was Bryce Pinkham.
Twenty-six composers contributed pieces, mostly texts, among them Neil Bartram, John Bucchino (setting Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Time Does Not Bring Relief”), Peter Foley, Jenny Gierring, Adam Gwon, Henry Krieger, Andrew Lippa, David Loud, and Joseph Thalken, who often accompanied Luker and here led a five-person band (Deborah Avery, Katherine Cherbas, Craig Magnano, and Benny Koonyevsky).
Beside Edna St. Vincent Millay, the texts set and lending themselves to the revered art-song (lieder) category, were by, among others, Sara Teasdale, Frank O’Hara, Phoebe Rosenblum when she was 7, Mary Kelly when she was 13, Guillaume Apollinaire in a Richard Wilbur translation, Shel Silverstein, Dorothy Parker, C. Day-Lewis, e. e. cummings, and Langston Hughes.
Normally, benefit concerts are not arranged for reviews. What can be said of this one is that it doubled as a celebration of the soprano range. Throughout, not a sharp or a flat was heard; pleasing vibratos were. But perhaps a few words about one singer and one actual song (among the texts set) can be mentioned.
The song, a special material item for Luker, was written by Michael Heitzman and Ilene Reid. It’s ‘”Not Funny” and sends up the sorry fact that few songs in the musical comedy repertoire are created for sopranos – no laughs garnered when hitting those high notes. Strallen delivered it with a glorious high note, thereby and ironically eliciting a huge laugh.
The only disappointing news about the outstanding concert is that evidently it was not videotaped or recorded. Might it possibly be repeated? What with all those other musicalized texts to choose from? Rebecca Luker, Project ALS, and a future audience or two deserve that.
The Rebecca Luker Songbook: A Benefit Concert was presented for one performance on May 22, 2023 at Symphony Space. Information: www.symphonyspace.org
