| |
The Songs I Sing
BOB MARLEY ONCE said, "One good thing about music is that when it hits, you feel no pain."
And that's probably one of the reasons that I love music and singing so much. It evokes so many memories in each of us and, when I have the opportunity to sing, I can see the effect the music has on the audience.
I almost cannot remember a time when I didn't sing. Beginning at age 12 I trained by taking breathing lessons for five years. I then studied opera and, when I got to Las Vegas six years ago, I took vocal lessons so I could sing despite the local conditions—including the dry air, prevalence of allergies—that can injure a voice.
 Although I do all sorts of material, I've always loved singing the big ballads. Songs like Streisand's Somewhere, Al Jolson's April Showers, Even Now by Barry Manilow and so much of Céline Dion's music, have always been my favorites. I believe this classic type of music will always be loved.
Of course, in planning a show, you have to sacrifice. If it were up to me, I'd do these ballads all the time but you have to change it and try new things. Along the way, there have been some surprises.
One of those was when I sang Patsy Cline's Crazy. It got one of the best audience responses ever. It blew me away because it wasn't a big song like Somewhere; a song where my vocal cords would be on the stage. It is smaller, quieter, and the audience loved it. So that was a nice surprise. As you'd expect, though, there were also numbers that didn't work out so well.
I had put together a medley of three of my favorite songs. I started with Somewhere, then went into a Céline Dion song and ended with Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love You. I performed to the best of my ability, but I think it left people feeling confused. There were too many changes in it; too much emotion.
So you learn that there's give-and-take between audience and performer and you never know what's going to happen.
In planning for our new show at the Sahara, we're going to make some changes. It will be more of a story-show. We'll tell the story of the Scintas in music and comedy. For instance, I'll begin with Ma, He's Makin' Eyes at Me, Eddie Cantor's song I sang when I was a child and doing those old vaudeville-type numbers and, then, I'll progress to the big ballads I do today.
There are two songs I've never performed that I'd love to do. One is Where Is Love?, a quiet song from the show Oliver!, that has the potential to be a real powerhouse number. The other is the Gladys Knight song, The Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me.
But, no matter what I sing, I've seen that through music you can take an audience full of strangers, who range in age from 20 on up, and entwine them so they are as one. By the end of the show they're all sharing the emotions evoked by the music.
As I sing my songs I can see this happening and it's very powerful. It's such a gift to be able to bring that to people. 
|
|
