Being a Liza Minnelli fan, I will have to vote for Liza's voice during her Cabaret, New York New York and Liza With A Z era.
Having said that, Judy At Carnegie Hall blows me away. That woman was at the peak of her powers at this concert and the double CD set is testament of her hold over the star-studded audience that night.
But as an entertainer, Liza is more talented as she can dance too. At the legendary Palladium concert, Liza danced up a storm while her mother watched on and became competitive.
Liza May Minnelli
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Terence Lee
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Terence Lee
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Hi Gray
Liza was indeed great in Cabaret but the DVD begs for a remastering as the images are so grainy.
Since I now have a Blu-Ray player and a 46" LCD TV, I can't wait for Cabaret to be released in Blu-Ray in Full HD. That will be a dream come true!
I even like Liza in New York New York though many don't. If you watch it, be sure to catch the uncensored version complete with the "Happy Endings" musical sequences.
Liza was indeed great in Cabaret but the DVD begs for a remastering as the images are so grainy.
Since I now have a Blu-Ray player and a 46" LCD TV, I can't wait for Cabaret to be released in Blu-Ray in Full HD. That will be a dream come true!
I even like Liza in New York New York though many don't. If you watch it, be sure to catch the uncensored version complete with the "Happy Endings" musical sequences.
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Terence Lee
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This is the best review I have read regarding Liza's concerts in London.
Life's Still a Cabaret for Liza Minnelli
by Pete Clark
London Evening Standard, May 27, 2008
As soon as I got through the doors, it was obvious that this was going to be an evening to die for.
There is a sense of excitement at certain gigs, and then there is the faintly hysterical cloud of mingled hormones that signifies the arrival of Liza Minnelli.
Although no one says as much, there seems to be a general consensus that it is a miracle that this woman is still with us.
Most of the lower part of her body has been rebuilt, and her brain and heart have been put through the mincer by a series of catastrophic episodes, not all of which have been beyond her control.
When she takes the stage, the audience are swept to their feet and narrowly avoid being involved in a stage-diving swoon.
She wears items of clothing that sparkle like they did in the old days. "You look terrific," she tells the adoring throng, knowing, in the nicest possible way, that they are just a reflection of herself. Whatever costume she is wearing, a shoulder will sooner or later be revealed and thereupon will be displayed a glittering bra strap. This, I think, is her signature.
There are some songs, of course, but they are mostly fitted in between anecdotes, the kind of anecdotes that you might find yourself spilling out to a therapist. There was a story about a powder puff soaked in tears that made me wish I had a therapist to call my own.
She says of her pianist: "When he plays, I can hear my heart beat." It would take a stony heart not to recognise that the person on stage is a very needy individual.
She has been brought up on the sound of applause and can count the sincerity of every single handclap. That is why she is such a great performer: when you turn up at a concert such as this, you had better wear your heart on your sleeve.
Her voice is still terrific, although the breathlessness has gone beyond stage effect and become a worry. A couple of tunes from Cabaret get a run out, but her heart is obviously in the material from the second half of the show, which is a tribute to mentor Kay Thompson and is performed with four song-and-dance men impersonating the Williams Brothers of the 1940s.
By this time, Liza is wearing very little, revealing legs that may owe something to medical science but have been fiercely reclaimed.
"Remember when I used to get down on one knee?" she teases, "Well forget it."
The lady can still self-deprecate and we should all get down on one knee and thank heaven for it. What a glorious show-off.
Life's Still a Cabaret for Liza Minnelli
by Pete Clark
London Evening Standard, May 27, 2008
As soon as I got through the doors, it was obvious that this was going to be an evening to die for.
There is a sense of excitement at certain gigs, and then there is the faintly hysterical cloud of mingled hormones that signifies the arrival of Liza Minnelli.
Although no one says as much, there seems to be a general consensus that it is a miracle that this woman is still with us.
Most of the lower part of her body has been rebuilt, and her brain and heart have been put through the mincer by a series of catastrophic episodes, not all of which have been beyond her control.
When she takes the stage, the audience are swept to their feet and narrowly avoid being involved in a stage-diving swoon.
She wears items of clothing that sparkle like they did in the old days. "You look terrific," she tells the adoring throng, knowing, in the nicest possible way, that they are just a reflection of herself. Whatever costume she is wearing, a shoulder will sooner or later be revealed and thereupon will be displayed a glittering bra strap. This, I think, is her signature.
There are some songs, of course, but they are mostly fitted in between anecdotes, the kind of anecdotes that you might find yourself spilling out to a therapist. There was a story about a powder puff soaked in tears that made me wish I had a therapist to call my own.
She says of her pianist: "When he plays, I can hear my heart beat." It would take a stony heart not to recognise that the person on stage is a very needy individual.
She has been brought up on the sound of applause and can count the sincerity of every single handclap. That is why she is such a great performer: when you turn up at a concert such as this, you had better wear your heart on your sleeve.
Her voice is still terrific, although the breathlessness has gone beyond stage effect and become a worry. A couple of tunes from Cabaret get a run out, but her heart is obviously in the material from the second half of the show, which is a tribute to mentor Kay Thompson and is performed with four song-and-dance men impersonating the Williams Brothers of the 1940s.
By this time, Liza is wearing very little, revealing legs that may owe something to medical science but have been fiercely reclaimed.
"Remember when I used to get down on one knee?" she teases, "Well forget it."
The lady can still self-deprecate and we should all get down on one knee and thank heaven for it. What a glorious show-off.
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Terence Lee
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Liza Minnelli, Clyde Auditorium, Glasgow
by Marianne Gunn
Glasgow Herald, June 9, 2008
Taking the stage wearing velveteen leggings and a diamante headband, on first appearances Ms Minnelli wouldn't have been amiss on board a cruise ship. In her first UK tour in more than 20 years -- and with top tickets an eye-watering £95 -- expectations were high and breath was bated to see if Liza could still deliver.
Her breathy, raspy, over-dramatic delivery proved that here was a performer very much from another, stylised era. Who else could name-drop Sinatra, Scorsese and Sondheim without batting an eyelid?
For the first half you could hear a pin drop. She mesmerised with every little lispy gasp of feigned pleasure and faux nervousness -- and I've never seen a standing ovation for almost every song.
It was a show that was slick to the point of extreme facial choreography -- and, boy, does Liza know how to work it. She may as well have crowed "lights, camera, action!" whenever those eyes started darting and fluttering around and to the auditorium.
She is also a consummate comedienne, a fact that was not lost as she joked about her extreme dieting, ironically citing both Jenny Craig and Sara Lee as Great American Women. Her extreme marital habits were also mentioned: "One day I was divorcing someone" she joked with the crowd, to fabulous whoops of support and adoration.
But, as it should be, the songs were the true show-stoppers -- numbers such as Cabaret's Maybe This Time and My Own Best Friend from her Broadway days as Roxie Hart in Chicago. Closing the first half, she duped the crowd with an understated, tongue-in-cheek intro to Kander and Ebb's Cabaret. Her other signature tune -- New York, New York -- provided the pinnacle moment of the second half, which was a tribute to her godmother Kay Thompson, a vocal coach, writer, performer and truly inspirational woman.
As part of a generation who knows Liza Minnelli more for the ill-advised Stepping Out than her seminal turn in Cabaret, it was a pleasure to see an old-school star in action, in the limelight and just about in touch with reality.
by Marianne Gunn
Glasgow Herald, June 9, 2008
Taking the stage wearing velveteen leggings and a diamante headband, on first appearances Ms Minnelli wouldn't have been amiss on board a cruise ship. In her first UK tour in more than 20 years -- and with top tickets an eye-watering £95 -- expectations were high and breath was bated to see if Liza could still deliver.
Her breathy, raspy, over-dramatic delivery proved that here was a performer very much from another, stylised era. Who else could name-drop Sinatra, Scorsese and Sondheim without batting an eyelid?
For the first half you could hear a pin drop. She mesmerised with every little lispy gasp of feigned pleasure and faux nervousness -- and I've never seen a standing ovation for almost every song.
It was a show that was slick to the point of extreme facial choreography -- and, boy, does Liza know how to work it. She may as well have crowed "lights, camera, action!" whenever those eyes started darting and fluttering around and to the auditorium.
She is also a consummate comedienne, a fact that was not lost as she joked about her extreme dieting, ironically citing both Jenny Craig and Sara Lee as Great American Women. Her extreme marital habits were also mentioned: "One day I was divorcing someone" she joked with the crowd, to fabulous whoops of support and adoration.
But, as it should be, the songs were the true show-stoppers -- numbers such as Cabaret's Maybe This Time and My Own Best Friend from her Broadway days as Roxie Hart in Chicago. Closing the first half, she duped the crowd with an understated, tongue-in-cheek intro to Kander and Ebb's Cabaret. Her other signature tune -- New York, New York -- provided the pinnacle moment of the second half, which was a tribute to her godmother Kay Thompson, a vocal coach, writer, performer and truly inspirational woman.
As part of a generation who knows Liza Minnelli more for the ill-advised Stepping Out than her seminal turn in Cabaret, it was a pleasure to see an old-school star in action, in the limelight and just about in touch with reality.
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Terence Lee
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Liza's At The Palace!
by Rex Reed
New York Observer, December 9, 2008
I don't know how many comebacks a been-around human body over 50 is physiologically capable of pulling off before it drops dead, but in her electrifying new show at the Palace, Liza Minnelli, 62, like her mother before her, has done it again. Sparkling and splendid and larky and nervous and overwhelming all at the same time, she is also stylishly slim in Halston perfection. Brilliantly directed and choreographed by Ron Lewis, she looks great. She is fabulously energetic and spirited. The weight she's lost is the equivalent of a year's supply of Big Macs! And the standing ovations that never cease are more than deserved. It's sort of a goddam miracle.
One of the disadvantages of appearing in a weekly newspaper is that everybody else gets their raves into print before you do. So you've already read about how the work paid off -- that's the talisman she lives by in her reconverted life, knocking the most jaded New Yorkers right out of their Choos and Blahniks, even if they could still afford them. You've already heard that even though she's sung "Cabaret" and "Maybe This Time" so many times, she often seems more like Sally Bubbles than Sally Bowles; her personal vulnerability and Raggedy Ann eyes gave both songs a huggable wistfulness as fresh as new linen dried on a clothesline. The second act, devoted to the historic nightclub act of her godmother, the lavishly legendary Kay Thompson, laced with anecdotes and musical mayhem that celebrate the vocal arrangements of Kay and the four Williams brothers (many refurbished by jazzy musical supervisor Billy Stritch), assisted by a sensational quartet of singing, dancing fools (Jim Caruso, Johnny Rodgers, Cortes Alexander and Tiger Martina), was merely out of this world. If you don't know who Kay Thompson was, or what she contributed to the history of show business, now's the time to find out. And no Roget's Thesaurus can provide the proper word to describe the tears that flowed through Liza's final, unrehearsed encore, saluting the holiday season with a song she vowed she'd never do in public -- her mother's own "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." So forget about raised eyebrows, high anxiety and wondering if she'll show up at all. This is Liza in Triumph, not Liza in Trouble. So she's had so many knee replacements and hip replacements that you can't get too close with a Geiger counter. Maybe she no longer kneels in the first act, second act or any act at all. The bottom line is, she's lost nothing. Once again, she's run the demons out of the forest, bridged the moat and the Palace is all hers again. She's not leasing space. She owns the place.
I don't want to gas about how she inherited her mother's razor-sharp wit, her father's flair and what her godmother called "bazazz." Her talent is unimpeachable, but you have to admire something else -- her sheer tenacity in the pursuit of survival. I won't dwell on how special she sounds with a dazzling 12-piece orchestra, turning the lyrics of every impeccable song in her repertoire into the story of her life. You'll see and hear that for yourself. But when she sings the original lyrics by Roger Edens for Judy Garland's debut on the same stage, and your heart stops, think about this: She's the kind of history lesson that not only brings back the ghosts of Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson, Marilyn Miller, Sophie Tucker, Fanny Brice, Eva Tanguay, Judy Garland and the other show business legends who haunt the hallowed Palace stage. She wears on her slim shoulders the responsibility for maintaining the balance and protecting the history of what went before, broadening the horizons of vaudeville in a profound, adult way while adding her own distinctive chapter. Striking gold again in bankrupt times, she can forget about "Liza with a 'Z.'" I call what she's doing "Artistry with an A." What she's done is create art, and the best, most unique work of art is herself.
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Lena & Harry Smith
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Terence Lee
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Firstly--yes, I think British fans --of whoever--are very faithful. This has been proved to me on many oaccasions at various concerts in Uk.
Also Terence, I guess you know anout Liza's new Live cd---due out any day-I think it is called "Liza at the Palace"--but I have no idea of any of the tracks.
Also Terence, I guess you know anout Liza's new Live cd---due out any day-I think it is called "Liza at the Palace"--but I have no idea of any of the tracks.
Mariana
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Terence Lee
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Hi Mariana
My copy is being shipped to me and should arrive next week.
Here are the songs :
Disc: 1
1. Teach Me Tonight
2. I Would Never Leave You
3. If You Hadn't, But You Did
4. What Makes A Man A Man?
5. My Own Best Friend
6. Maybe This Time
7. He's Funny That Way
8. Palace Medley
9. Cabaret
Disc: 2
1. But The World Goes 'Round
2. Hello, Hello
3. Jubilee Time
4. Basin Street Blues
5. Clap Yo' Hands
6. Liza (All The Clouds'll Roll Away)
7. I Love A Violin
8. Mammy
9. Theme from 'New York, New York'
My copy is being shipped to me and should arrive next week.
Here are the songs :
Disc: 1
1. Teach Me Tonight
2. I Would Never Leave You
3. If You Hadn't, But You Did
4. What Makes A Man A Man?
5. My Own Best Friend
6. Maybe This Time
7. He's Funny That Way
8. Palace Medley
9. Cabaret
Disc: 2
1. But The World Goes 'Round
2. Hello, Hello
3. Jubilee Time
4. Basin Street Blues
5. Clap Yo' Hands
6. Liza (All The Clouds'll Roll Away)
7. I Love A Violin
8. Mammy
9. Theme from 'New York, New York'
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Terence Lee
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