A national treasure. Those were the words used by more than one guest artist to describe the headliner of Judy Collins & Friends, performed at Town Hall on Saturday night. The evening, dubbed 85 Years of Music & Protest, served as a fitting and joyous celebration of the Grammy Award-winning performer with no less than 55 albums to her credit and whose career has spanned nearly seven decades. Featuring an array of talented performers who made clear their love and respect, the event made clear how seminal Collins’ influence has been on the folk and pop music scene.
The evening began, appropriately enough, with Collins performing solo, accompanied by a four-piece band. “I’m the American Idol of 1956,” the performer joked, looking resplendent with her short-cropped silver hair and purple sequined outfit. Her crystalline soprano is understandably uneven at this point in her advanced years, but its beauty still shone on such songs as “Mountain Girl” and Joni Mitchell’s classic “Both Sides Now.”
Sophie B. Hawkins, of “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover” fame, served as the evening’s ebullient host, so energetic she literally jogged onto the stage with every entrance. “I’ve never hosted anything, not even a party!” she exclaimed, but her thrill at presiding over this celebration of her idol was manifest at every moment.
After Collins’ short set, the evening featured an impressive line-up of performers delivering songs she’s written and recorded. The Norwegian folk duo Oakland Rain showcased their sterling harmony vocals on “When I Was a Girl in Colorado” and expressed their love for Collins in gushingly adorable fashion. Ricki Lee Jones employed her distinctive jazzy phrasing for a slowed-down version of “Mr. Tambourine Man” that infused the lyrics with haunting depth. After she finished, Jones commented about the evening’s subject. “To last that long in life is an achievement,” she pointed out. “But to keep singing those high notes!”
Broadway and film composer Stephen Schwartz took to the piano for a duet with Collins. Not on a song from one of his shows, but rather one that could be described as Wicked-adjacent, namely “Over the Rainbow.”
Cabaret star Justin Vivian Bond told an amusing story about how he became familiar with Collins after his newly evangelical aunt forced his cousins to give up all their secular records, with him the beneficiary. He channeled the “protest” part of the evening with a rendition of “Marat/Sade” sung with revolutionary fervor, as did Martha Redbone with a mesmerizing, a cappella rendition of “Dreamers,” a 2018 protest song written by Collins in response to Trump’s immigration crackdown. And Hawkins temporarily abandoned her hosting duties to deliver a heartfelt version of “Diamonds and Rust,” Joan Baez’s song inspired by her relationship with Bob Dylan.
Collins, too, has a long history with Dylan, who was one of many figures, including Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, and Peter Yarrow, about whom she told moving and amusing anecdotes. She also frequently cracked jokes like a seasoned vaudeville comedian, including a saucy one credited to Mae West.
After the procession of solo guest stars that also included Beth Nielsen Chapman and Paula Cole, Collins again took the stage, demonstrating she was in full command of her talents with a stirring performance of “The Blizzard” in which she accompanied herself on piano. After the obligatory “Send in the Clowns” that unsurprisingly elicited a standing ovation, a series of duets followed: with Ari Hest on “Strangers Again”; British singer/guitarist Richard Thompson on the Fairport Convention classic “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?”; and Stephen Stills on “Helplessly Helping,” the song he wrote after the break-up of their relationship and recorded with Crosby, Still and Nash.
“He and I had an affair,” Collins saucily told the crowd. “It lasted long enough for him to write a song about me.”
More than one song, actually. He also wrote the classic “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” which the entire ensemble sang in the heartfelt but ragged group number that served as the show’s closer. Unless you count the spontaneous rendition of “Happy Birthday” sung by the crowd to the delighted Collins as the artists were leaving the stage.
