Amanda McBroom At The Melbourne Festival
Bryce Hallett, The Sydney Morning Herald
Singer and songwriter Amanda McBroom, a poised and polished performer, is the sixth American cabaret artist to appear in the art deco Myer Mural Hall. It’s become a firm tradition on the October calendar and McBroom, who succeeds Barbara Cook, Michael Feinstein, Betty Buckley, Joel Grey and Andrea Marcovicci (in that order), is a warm, good-humored and enchanting performer who mixes her own songs… including her “standard” The Rose, made famous by Bette Midler… with those of Hoagy Carmichael, Rodgers and Hart and Jacques Brel.
Accompanied on piano by her song writing collaborator Joel Silberman, McBroom has an appealing, tuneful voice but it is her phrasing, sense of fun and lyrical instincts which give dramatic flight to the songs, no least Brel’s Carousel and her self-penned Errol Flynn, a ballad about her father.
She’s a class act and well worth catching at the City Recital Hall, Angel Place, on November 5.
