PHIRO DOES PIAF

Myriam Phiro onstage at Birdland

Guest review by Ellen Godfrey:

THE LITTLE SPARROW - MYRIAM PHIRO’S TRIBUTE TO EDITH PIAF

French-Canadian jazz and cabaret singer Myriam Phiro brought her cabaret tribute to Birdland, the popular New York City jazz club, to honor the legendary Edith Piaf. This year marks 103 years since her death. Ms. Phiro has given sold out concerts in many cabaret and jazz clubs including Joe’s Pub, the Rainbow Room, and 54 Below, just to to name a few. She has performed her Piaf tribute in many of these and in other venues. The great chanteuse, Edith Piaf, was an idol of Ms. Phiro, who was inspired to share her love of Piaf with her audience.  Her “Piaf” cabaret included many of her songs as well as information about Piaf’s life.

Despite her fame and her musical accomplishments, Piaf had a hard and sad life.  Edith Piaf, whose nickname was “the little sparrow,", was born on December 19, 1915 in Belleville, a suburb of Paris.  Her father was a street singer.  Her mother abandoned her to a bordello, where she lived for several years. When she was 14, she joined her father as a street performer.  A night club owner, Louis Leplee, discovered her in Pigalle in 1935 and was so impressed with her voice that he hired her immediately.  She became not only a singer, but also a songwriter and cabaret star. 

She was the most famous singer in France and sang often at the Olympia Music Hall there.  After the end of World War II, her fame continued to grow and she started touring the world.  She was popular in the United States and performed many times on the Ed Sullivan show and in several theaters in New York City.  She also composed many of her own songs such as “La Vie in Rose” and “Milord.” She had a huge following wherever she went.  

Unfortunately, like  Judy Garland, another great singing star of the time, she began drinking and taking drugs.  She died in 1963 at the age of 47, leaving behind a legacy of recordings, books, and films.

Myriam Phiro received huge applause as she entered the stage on Thursday night, dressed in a simple long black dress, the only color that Piaf ever wore for her concerts.  Ms. Phiro has a warm personality and immediately made the audience feel at home.  On-stage, she was accompanied by a three piece orchestra: pianist and accordionist Hyuna Park, double bass player Yoshi Waki, and percussionist Alex Raderman.  

All three of them blended together in the jazz format and kept the show moving with some improvisation and lots of enthusiasm. Later in the program, two more talented musicians were added, each one playing along with Ms. Phiro: Adrien Chevalier, a jazz violinist from Provence, whose family are violinists, and Linus Wyrsch, a well known jazz clarinet player.  Each of them accompanied Ms. Phiro with great style. 

She opened with her jazz trio accompanying her in the Rod Stewart song “I Wish You Love,” which was performed with a jazz beat.  Ms. Phiro has a charming warm soprano voice that filled the space beautifully.  She started singing in French, then switched to English, and then returned to French. She did this language switching in several of her songs.

For her second song, “C’est magnifique”,  written by the great Cole Porter, she told the audience that they would be singing along with her when she gave them the signal to join in with “ou la la la.” The audience had great fun singing together.

After these two songs, Ms. Phiro began the celebration of what would have been Edith Piaf’s 103rd birthday.  She interspersed information about Piaf’s life between some of her songs.  Her wonderful pianist, who supported the singer so well, picked up an accordion and showed her great musicianship in this instrument as well. She played the Piaf song “L’Accordeoniste”, in true cabaret style.  Ms. Phiro sang it of course, in beautiful French with a smoky quality to her voice. Although she sings in the “Piaf” style she does not try to imitate Piaf’s voice. The song starts slowly, then gets more and more frantic as she realizes her boyfriend will probably not be returning from war.

Other well-known Piaf songs were “La Vie En Rose”, seeing the world through rose colored glasses; “La foule” in which the crowd carries a woman in love through the crowd and loses a man she finds; and “Sous le ciel de Paris” describing the life under Paris skies. While all of Piaf songs were about love or loss, they all have a different sound and a different rhythm-- some slow, some soulful, some happy, and some sad. Ms. Phiro always found the right atmosphere for each song

Ms. Phiro surprised us by telling us that she was in love, not just with the songs, but with the double bass!! The double bass player gave her his instrument and she sang two songs while accompanying herself on the bass. A multi-talented lady!

The cabaret that Ms. Phiro put together was delightful and she and her musicians received great applause when the show ended.  I hope that Ms. Phiro will continue to present these wonderful cabaret performances.

Piaf’s blue house still stands in Belleville and has been turned into a small museum, whose hours are very irregular.  I was lucky enough to have seen it and just standing in front of it brought back many memories of her wonderful career.

© meche kroop

 

COME TO THE CABARET!

Katharine Mehrling

We keep trying to expand our musical taste beyond opera and lieder; we have been only minimally successful in our attempt to relate to contemporary opera and song. So we did not have great expectation prior to our Saturday night venture--a cabaret performance at Joe's Pub, a very comfortable venue at the Public Theater. We did not even glance at the publicity. We believe art should speak for itself.

Well, we have nothing but admiration for an artists who can entrance us for an hour and a half by virtue of vocal and linguistic ability as well as stage presence. Berlin artist Katharine Mehrling richly deserved the standing ovation she got from her fans, an ovation which produced a second encore--"La Vie en Rose".

Let us begin with her stage presence. Ms. Mehrling illustrated the metaphor of "holding someone in the palm of her hand", but in this case it was the entire audience. It seemed to be an act of magic to unite all those people into a single unit, even getting people to sing along with her. Whatever she did seemed right in the moment, whether it was offering her wine to a lone man sitting ringside, tousling the hair of her pianist, blowing through a kazoo shaped like a mini-saxophone, or dancing around the stage.

The voice has an incredibly appealing quality, in spite of being amplified. She exhibited all the qualities we admire in an operatic recitalist, using phrasing and dynamics as well as gesture to get the song across. Our favorite moment occurred toward the end of the show, right in the middle of "Je regrette rien", when she put down the microphone for one enormously touching verse. We couldn't help wondering why the rest of the show was amplified. Her natural voice filled the room with beauty.

It seems to us that nowadays people have become accustomed to amplified sound--the louder the better. We noticed that the applause was the loudest when she sang like a pop star. We felt like a dinosaur because we treasured the quietest most intimate moments.

As far as linguistic ability, Ms. Mehrling sang in perfect French, superb Spanish, and barely accented English, as well as her native German. Regular readers have probably already guessed our preferences. When verses were performed in English translation next to the original language, it was always the latter which we felt on a deeper level. Diction was so good in every language that there was no problem understanding every word.

The programming had enough variety to suit everyone. She opened with the Brecht/Weill "That Old Bilbao Moon" in German and, whether she actually forgot the English lyrics or pretended to, it seemed to bring the audience together.

There was a sprinkling of engaging anecdotes about her hometown Berlin, especially about the Kit Kat Club, and climate change demonstrations. She mentioned that it is the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and that is surely something to celebrate.

She spoke about Marlena Dietrich and Edith Piaf, singing some of the songs they made famous like "I'm in Love Again...I Can't Help It".  Please forgive us if we are not as familiar with these songs as we probably should be, but we certainly did enjoy hearing them.

We are familiar with "Padam, padam, padam" through our friend Kim David Smith who introduced us to cabaret several years ago.

There was a cute story about her admission to the USA as a "German alien with extraordinary abilities", one of which was her ability to yodel; the anecdote was followed by a yodeling song that left us speechless. Now that's one technique that opera singers don't have.

Ms. Mehrling is not only a cabaret artist but an actress as well, and also a composer and recording artist. She told us how she grew up in a room over her parents' musical saloon where she was exposed to all kinds of music; indeed one could hear strains of jazz and bebop in her eclectic performance.

A great recital often results in our pursuing knowledge of something and one of the songs Ms. Mehrling performed in Spanish was "Gracias a la Vida"; how could we not know that this was one of the most recorded songs in Latin America? It was written by renowned Chilean singer/songwriter Violeta Parra in 1966 as a charity single, recorded by Voces Unidas por Chile; Ms. Parra committed suicide a year later. We dare you to read the lyrics online without being moved to tears.

Ms. Mehrling received superb support from her pianist and bassist who were not mentioned in the press release, nor on her website. It's a pity because they added greatly to the performance

© meche kroop

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PIAF AT 100

Myriam Phiro

Trixie La Fée (Francesca Caviglia)

Oh, celebrities!  We love them, we hate them, we put them on pedestals and we tear them down.  But Myriam Phiro recreated one Monday night at The Metropolitan Room and told us exactly what she wanted us to believe about Edith Piaf, the "little sparrow" who won French hearts in the 20th c. and went on to captivate the world.


If you were looking for truth, we recommend that you look elsewhere. But if you were looking for legend and fine musical values you had plenty to enjoy as Ms. Phiro, who conceived the show, told and sang her version--with assistance from musical director Benjamin Ickies playing piano and accordion, Lars Ekman playing upright bass, Luis Ebert on drums, performer Leonid the Magnificent in various roles, and Francesca Caviglia portraying Marlena Dietrich and performing her famous fan dance.  WOW!

It makes a great story that Piaf was born on the streets of Belleville but her birth certificate reveals a hospital birth.  Yes, it is probably true that her mother abandoned her at birth and that she was raised in her paternal grandmother's brothel.  It is also true that her own illegitimate child died of neglect.

Much of the rest of her life story is shrouded in mystery and exaggeration. Such "embroidery" is common in the lives of the famous. Ms. Phiro described Piaf's early years as a street performer with her father and her discovery by a nightclub impresario Louis Leplée--but did not mention the fact that this man died mysteriously a year later and Piaf was named as an accessory.

No mention was made of her activity in World War II, during which she seems to have entertained both the French and the Germans. Scandal is no stranger to celebrities. But the world loved her music and forgave all. Alcoholism and drug addiction are also common among celebrities and this too has been overlooked and forgiven. She died of liver cancer in 1967.

Let us forget all this and focus on the music. We would be surprised if anyone in Monday's audience ever heard her sing live, although she made a couple appearances at Carnegie Hall in the mid-20th c.  But many have heard her recordings and most people are at least somewhat familiar with her songs, the lyrics of which she wrote herself.

Ms. Phiro generously plied us with one gorgeous song after another and impressed us with her expressivity and vocal beauty.  Our personal favorites, unsurprisingly, were "La Vie en Rose", "Padam Padam" (a favorite of cabaret artist Kim Smith), and "Non, je ne regrette rien". It helps that Ms. Phiro is petite, although not as petite as the 4'8" Piaf!

The evening was an effective portrayal of one woman's conception of an artist's life--lived fully, if not wisely. One thought we had during the show was that Ms. Phiro might consider delivering the narrative material in the first person instead of the third.

Francesca Caviglia made a dual appearance, at first as the disdainful Marlena Dietrich, and later in her extraordinary fan dance which we have seen before and would be happy to see again!  The last time we saw her, she was stripping and singing opera at the same time. Trixie is just full of tricks!

(c) meche kroop