New York was transformed into a Noël Coward Festival this spring as the city, in collaboration with the Noël Coward Foundation, celebrated The Master’s work with exhibitions, concerts and film showings. In what had to be the most imaginative event of them all, Jazz at Lincoln Center presented an evening of Sir Noël’s songs re-imagined and performed in jazz style.

Titled England Swings: Noël Coward in Jazz, and presented at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, the show offered sixteen of Coward’s songs reworked for contemporary listening. Assembling the show at the invitation of the Foundation, Eric Comstock (pictured) cloned himself to serve as the evening’s host and artistic director, as well as arranger and performer for many of the numbers. Joining him on stage were singer/pianists Daryl Sherman and Billy Stritch, singer Barbara Fasano, guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli, tenor sax star Harry Allen, and legendary jazz vocalist Andy Bey.

Coward’s songs, so often performed with focus on the wit of his lyrics, shone in their melodic beauty as brought out by the evening’s performers. Among highlights were: Pizzarelli’s gentle solo of “Someday I’ll Find You”; Stritch’s swinging “Twentieth Century Blues” and “Poor Little Rich Girl”; Fasano’s moving “Matelot,” and – as the last performer to be introduced, then evoking cheers for his music-making – Andy Bey, with imaginative jazz versions of “If Love Were All” and “Sail Away.” Fitting finales to the evening were Comstock’s “The Party’s Over Now” and Bey’s “I’ll See You Again.”  First-class instrumental backup throughout was delivered by Neal Miner on bass and Vito Lesczak on drums.

A plus to the evening was Dizzy’s itself: “a room with a view,” with its wall of windows behind the bandstand displaying the nighttime sky of Manhattan. The mood and the music – and the audience’s reception – would surely have made Sir Noël feel at home.

Peter Haas
Cabaret Scenes
June 18, 2012
www.cabaretscenes.org