Tucson Desert Song Festival went from Brahms to Bernadette in its opening weekend.
The Tucson Symphony Orchestra and TSO Chorus performed Brahms's "A German Requiem" Friday night. And on Saturday night, Bernadette Peters brought a little vintage starlet pizzaz to the 19-day event that continues through Feb. 5.
Wearing a glittery lavender spaghetti-strapped gown and impossibly high heels, the veteran star of screen and stage danced and sang her way through a 90-minute concert that dipped into her Hollywood and Broadway lives.
The show was reminiscent of a classic Broadway revue, singing and dancing with a little comedy — quips about Tucson's chilly weather, plugs for a house she apparently is selling — sprinkled in that delighted the near full UA Presents house at Centennial Hall. In a voice that might not have hit the highest of the high notes and seemed to fade once or twice at the lower register, Peters performed songs she sang and songs she wished she'd sung from her Broadway resume including "Let Me Entertain You" from "Gypsy"; "No One is Truly Alone" from "Into the Woods"; and "There Is Nothing Like A Dame" from "South Pacific."
During "Dame," Peters, performing with the energy and sex appeal of a woman half her 68 years, walked down the three or so steps from the stage into the audience. She shimmied along until she stopped at an unsuspecting man a few rows from the stage.
"You didn't think I was going to pick you, did you?" she asked, and although we couldn't see his face, we imagine from her reaction that he blushed.
Peters got a musical assist from her longtime pianist/music director Marvin Laird and a 10-piece chamber orchestra that included eight Tucson Symphony Orchestra players, each of whom she introduced and acknowledged from the the stage before segueing from Broadway to Hollywood. A highlight of that set was a song from the Amazon TV series "Mozart in the Jungle" — she plays the orchestra's manager — and a handful of songs from her favorite composers Rogers and Hammerstein, and Stephen Sondheim.
At the end of the night, Peters turned her attention to her passion for animals. She said the Southern Arizona Humane Society had joined her effort to find homes for shelter dogs and she had pledged to give them a donation. She also sang "Kramer's Song," which she wrote for her dog as part of her self-penned children's book. She was selling the book and her CDs in the Centennial Hall lobby after the show.
Tucson Desert Song Festival continues at 2 p.m. today with the TSO and TSO Chorus performing Brahms's "A German Requiem" at Tucson Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave., with guest vocalists bass baritone Andrew Craig Brown and soprano Heidi Stober. Click here for tickets and details.
