Julie Gold certified her reputation for charm and élan with her holiday show at The Duplex. An Evening with Julie Gold featured the Grammy (and other)-Award-winning Gold’s own music and lyrics. Her songs were appropriate to the season and affirmed her well-established spiritual nature. Among them were “Try Love,” in which hope confronts cynicism and “Be God,” in which she pleads in universal language for an improved life for everyone.

Accompanying herself on piano with verve and an assertive style, Gold was assisted by a vocal duo, Margaret “Madge” Dorn and Emily Bindinger. Other numbers maintained the holiday spirit, including a fervent, gospel-inspired “When He Walks with Me,” recalling the traditional “Just a Closer Walk with Thee,” and Gold’s “Come to Me as a Bird,” a quiet, thoughtful recitation of a simple friendship.

An inventive songwriter, albeit in a different vein, Christine Lavin took the stage as Julie Gold’s guest performer. Ms. Lavin, who accompanies herself on the guitar, writes topical songs that are great fun. Following her rendition of “Good Thing He Can’t Read My Mind,” she reversed viewpoints and the lyrics to those sung by a man. A song she wrote with others, “Hardwired,” was a test of the audience’s social sensibilities.

Gold has been quoted as expressing her philosophy that “the job of a song is to take a person on a musical journey for three minutes. In those three minutes, you can transport your listener to a better, higher place.” With that, her songs are simple melodies but complex language that have been recorded by many major artists. Both sensitive and thoughtful, her work is exemplified by her vastly popular “From a Distance” that, with Bette Midler’s recorded version, earned the Grammy Song of the Year Award.

Seymour Spilka
Cabaret Scenes
December 8, 2009
www.cabaretscenes.org