The four singers performing in “The Best of Bacharach” at TheatreZone: Brooke Rosenbluth, Larry Alexander, Kellie Cullinan and Elizabeth Marcantonio. COURTESY PHOTO
There’s no mistaking the music of Burt Bacharach.
Melodic. Hooky. Oddly compelling.
Songs such as “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” “Anyone Who Has a Heart” “Walk On By,” “I Say a Little Prayer,” “This Guy’s In Love With You,” “Wishin’ and Hopin’,” “The Look of Love,” “Don’t Make Me Over.”
They’re all his.
“I like to say that Andrew Lloyd Weber writes simple music that sounds complicated and Stephen Sondheim writes music that’s complicated but sounds simple,” says TheatreZone music director Charles Fornara. “And Burt Bacharach is more in the Sondheim camp than the Andrew Lloyd Webber camp.”
Mr. Fornara should know; he’s been steeped in the music of Bacharach lately, dealing with it from the inside out, directing four performers and a fivepiece band for “The Best of Bacharach.” The musical revue runs at TheatreZone through April 25.
One of the things that sets Bacharach’s music apart is that almost all of his songs contain constant meter changes.
Above: Kellie Cullinan, Brooke Rosenbluth and Elizabeth Marcantonio onstage. Right: Larry Alexander performs. COURTESY PHOTO
“These songs are monsters to try to get down rhythmically as a musician,” Mr. Fornara says. “Someone asked him once why he changes meters so frequently. I was fascinated to learn that he subjugates the ease of the music to the natural speech patterns.”
For example, he says, in the song “Promises, Promises,” the line, “Promises, promises/I’m all through with promises, promises,” “We have to change the meter ever bar or every other bar to make it work. His goal is to make the music sound exactly how a person would say it. That’s the number one thing.”
In one verse of “I Say a Little Prayer,” “people may not realize that there are at least 20 meter changes, and that’s not even the whole song. And yet, when you listen to the song, you don’t notice that there are any.
“It’s crazy. Nobody writes like that, except him.”
His early collaborator, Hal David, would write the lyrics; Bacharach then composed music to fit the mood and the syntax.
Their songs are wildly popular. Bacharach told The Guardian in 2019 that even he doesn’t know how many songs he’s written, nor how many have charted.
Dionne Warwick is considered one of the best interpreters of their tunes; between 1962 and 1968 she had 15 Top-40 hits with their songs.
Many others have recorded Bacharach tunes, including Dusty Springfield, Jackie DeShannon, BJ Thomas, Isaac Hayes, Ron Isley, The Carpenters, Aretha Franklin and Tom Jones.
In 1998, the composer collaborated with Elvis Costello, with the two releasing an album, “Painted From Memory.”
Jazz musicians such as Grant Green, Stanley Turrentine and Stan Getz, who recognized the jazz roots of his compositions, have also covered his music. (The composer listened to bebop as a teen.)
And Mr. Fornara confesses that he knew the 80s New Wave band Naked Eye’s cover of “Always Something There to Remind Me,” but didn’t realize that Dionne Warwick had originally sung the song.
FORNARA
The four singers performing in “The Best of Bacharach” at TheatreZone are: Larry Alexander, Kellie Cullinan, Elizabeth Marcantonio and Brooke Rosenbluth. (All will be masked; it is also required of the audience.)
They’ll perform 10 numbers, as well as four medleys.
The songs covered include “Close to You,” “Any Day Now” “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” “The Look of Love” and “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?”
“He knew how to write a pop tune for sure,” Mr. Fornara says. “It’s all so sophisticated I think it eludes the listener sometimes. There’s crazy meter there too in ‘Do You Know the Way to San Jose?’ A very unusual metric pattern, very unusual. But nobody knows how complicated it is; it fits the words so perfectly. You never say, ‘Oh what a strange rhythm that is.’ You just say, ‘Oh, that’s how it needs to go.’”
The composer has so many well-loved songs, so many hits, that TheatreZone is unable to include them all, especially within a one-hour time frame.
“We’re not just doing all the hits, we have some lesser known songs in there, songs maybe people aren’t as familiar with, such as ‘Wanting Things.’” (The song is from the Broadway show “Promises, Promises.”)
Mr. Fornara’s glad they’re performing “Any Day Now,” a personal favorite.
“I’ve loved this song for years,” he says. “It contains a particular chord progression that is my favorite of all time. A sequence of wonderful chords that just make me so happy.
“It’s fair to say that he doesn’t have just one style,” Mr. Fornara says. “You can hear a Burt Bacharach song and say, ‘That’s him,’ but not because it sounds like all the other songs. They’re all very different.
“But you can recognize him instantly in them.” ¦
April 22, 2021 at 12:40PM
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The sophisticated, jazzy, pop sounds of Burt Bacharach - Florida Weekly
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