Search - One Night Only Barbra Streisand and Quartet at The Village Vanguard September 26,2009 on DVD

IVOR I. from CHICAGO, IL
Reviewed on 1/8/2019...

I've never been a huge fan. Great voice but some awful career choices vis-a-vis producers and song choices. That aside, I have to say that this is about as good as it's ever going to get. No La Diva bullshit whatsoever. The real deal! Enjoy.

3 of 3 member(s) found this review helpful.

Her Name is Barbra

Amos Lassen | Little Rock, Arkansas | 05/05/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

""One Night Only: Barbra Streisand and Quartet at the Village Vanguard, September 26, 2009.

Her Name is Barbra

Amos Lassen

Let me start off by saying "Wow". This is the disc that many of us have been waiting for and it is magic. Streisand looks and sounds great and this time we see her in an intimate setting. Streisand has been singing for us for some forty-five years and she is a national treasure. Here she sings the standards and she is as amazing as ever.
The evening was beautiful and so is the DVD and to see it on blu-ray is quite an experience. The band is excellent and I could feel the warmth of the Village vanguard as Barbra sang. In this, if I may call it a concert, Barbra returns to her roots and sings for her supper. She is sublime and she has captured the heart of the songs she sings. This is just another triumph for La Streisand and proof that she always impresses. As she soars in song one feels the truth in her voice. This is a show that you really do not want to miss.
"

If you go away . . .

William B. Strawn | Winston-Salem, NC | 05/08/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I don't know what I expected from this . . . another well-timed but superficial performance to enhance sales vis a vis Oprah . . . the former president was there, and his wife and child . . . lots of old timers from the theater world. Phyllis Newman, Mrs. Jule Styne, Lorraine Gordon, etc. Her buddy, Cis Corman, and husband, the very cool Mr. Brolin. Could this possibly be a sincere artistic effort? I got it in the mail yesterday and sat down with my dogs and a glass of red wine and a little trepidation. I am not that fond of the "Love is the Answer" CD, though on repeated hearings, I think it is masterful, but requires some effort like an obscure artsy French or Japanese movie, maybe. Not a simple listen for me. I have purchased everything Streisand has released since I first saw the movie "Funny Girl" in 1968; I admittedly have not liked everything she has done. I walked out of her 2006 concert tour in Washington, DC at intermission because I thought it was awful (mostly Il Divo, in restrospect). I guess I mostly like my Barbra to myself and not in an arena with 15,000 other people. Anyway, I watched this thing once, and as each song passed, and as the banter played out, I became haunted and mesmerized once again by this "girl singer." Where did she come from? Where did this voice come from? This face? These eyes? That knowing smile? The gift of irony and sharp-edged humor? So after another couple of glasses of wine, I watched it again knowing I could just sit back and enjoy the give and take of it. I still don't know what to say. It's unlike anything I've seen previously from her or anyone else. As good in its way as "Happening in Central Park." Once she hits her stride and we get used to the panning shots of the audience and band, and take a deep breath because we know this is a "real" and "live" performance, then the thing makes complete sense as a work of art and not as the promotion it may have started out as. The long delay at the beginning waiting for her to appear, the anticipation, her inner Barbra shining through (she IS funny) in the dialogue (scripted? who knows);the planned or unplanned pan and zoom to her long-ago self singing at the "Blue Angel." This is the "girl singer" we hoped was still around somewhere. By the end, I wasn't sitting down, but was up against the big screen, with the speakers turned up to blasting, staring at this woman that could have been 67 or 17, she was that good, that eternal. Through all the showbiz stuff, and criticisms, and praise and awards, and whatever, here is at last a performance that will stand up there with the best she has ever done, or at least that we have the privelege to view. She worked at this, you can tell, her hair is a mess by the end. And she is hot, not just dewy. And did I say that she was beautiful, and funny, and sweet, and complicated, and . . . simply Streisand. I loved her interactions with the piano player, so cute, so giving. He must have been stressed, especially when she walked off the stage early, and you can hear him in the background shouting to the band "Happy Days are Here Again" to cover her leaving the stage unexpectedly. The camerwork is startingly considering all the limitations in this small and crowded room. I don't know, for some reason this made me think of the incomparable Robert Altman and how he might have made this. It even plays a bit like a movie. It really is that good! So finally, thank you, dearest, for all the years. Thank you most of all for this performance. What a gift!"

Streisand's Nostalgic Return to the Village Yields a Superb

Ed Uyeshima | San Francisco, CA USA | 05/07/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Given her inarguably legendary status and all the celebrities in attendance, Barbra Streisand can never really go home again, but that didn't stop me from being thoroughly entranced by this burnished record of her intimate performance at the Village Vanguard from last September. In the famous Greenwich Village jazz club that actually turned her down for a singing job nearly a half-century prior, she appears more relaxed than ever with her mellifluous voice intact. Directed quite unobtrusively by Scott Lochmus, the one-night event was timed with the release of her last album, her 63rd, Love is the Answer, a stunning studio-polished return to form filled with jazz standards and show ballads.

Backed only by a sharp yet accommodating four-piece band, the 67-year-old songstress still displays the melisma and dramatic conviction in a singular voice that remains barely diminished after all these years. Granted her high notes are gone, but her phrasing and interpretative skills remain unparalleled in her leisurely paced ninety-minute set. Selections from "Love Is the Answer" dominate the program, but freed from the disc's immaculate production values, Streisand's vocals feel much more alive and dynamic in the capture of her live performance here. She vividly expresses wistful regret in "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most" and answers the gentle wake-up call of the Sinatra chestnut, "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning".

The gentle bossa nova sway to "Gentle Rain" remains intoxicating, while the signature cleverness of Betty Comden and Adolph Green informs the heartfelt words of Jules Styne's yearning "Make Someone Happy". The lyricists' handiwork is also present in a lovely version of Leonard Bernstein's "Some Other Time" from "On the Town", a song Streisand admits to forgetting to sing at the end of her set. The singer's good friends, Alan and Marilyn Bergman, also in the audience, provide the sad-eyed break-up lyrics to Johnny Mandel's "Where Do You Start?" which the singer handles with dramatic aplomb. Streisand seamlessly adds a trio of Richard Rodgers classics from her recording youth to the program - the plaintive "Nobody's Heart" (which she apparently sang to Marlon Brando over the phone), the familiar "My Funny Valentine", and the love-besotted "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered".

Same as in her album, two of her more impressive performances are distinctly Gallic in flavor with melodramatic flourishes - the bittersweet opener, Artie Butler's "Here's to Life" and Jacques Brel's masochistic "Ne me quitte pas" which was later popularly translated by Rod McKuen into "If You Go Away". Unsurprisingly, Streisand inserts two of her signature songs, the self-penned "Evergreen" in tribute to Bill Clinton who is in the audience, and "The Way We Were", which causes Sarah Jessica Parker to wipe away a tear. A heavy sense of nostalgia permeates the program with a series of introductions provided by old colleagues, including Lorraine Gordon, who inherited the Village Vanguard after her husband died in 1989. She is the centerpiece of a featurette spotlighting the club's history. The quality of the high-definition video on the Blu-Ray edition is outstanding with Roger Grange's camerawork quite flattering to Streisand."