LeAndra Live – Strings and Voice II, a review

NIGEL A CAMPBELL

Part of life’s mysteries are the unintended consequences of actions and occurrences beyond one’s control.

The unavoidable absence due to illness of master musician and advertised special guest artist Mungal Patasar at LeAndra Live – String and Voice II concert – on April 26, the first night of a two-night run – created an opportunity for her sublime voice to shine above reconfigured instrumentation, and reinforced a widely held opinion of LeAndra having her generation’s finest voice in this country.

Without hyperbole, this intimate event at Castle Killarney (Stollmeyer’s Castle), Queen's Park, Port of Spain, superseded expectations by innovating new ways of listening to a wide repertoire from this island songbird.

[caption id="attachment_1152151" align="alignnone" width="1024"] LeAndra, Wendy Fitzwilliams and man[/caption]

Reconfigured shows always have teething problems – better stage management would have sufficed – but, in the end, what the sold-out audience of just 100 people in what was the downstairs living room of Killarney got to experience was two sides of the singer who showcased control and power simultaneously. Those two sides were her solid takes on Broadway and musical show tunes and an amazing transformation to interpreting the languid vibe of music from “hot latitudes,” including bolero and soca.

The juxtaposition of these often opposite vocal techniques proved to many that the additional training she got at the University of TT – Academy for the Performing Arts (UTT-APA) was worth it. Foundation, quality and tone were all objectively of a high standard. Her natural talent, evident while she was still a child, has been enhanced effectively.

LeAndra opened the show with her rendition of Never Enough from the musical film The Greatest Showman that set the tone for demonstrating her ease with the contemporary metropolitan songs from the American songbook. Power and her broad vocal range were on display. This was followed by another ballad, Flowers from the Broadway musical Hadestown.

[caption id="attachment_1152152" align="alignnone" width="1024"] LeAndra and Group [/caption]

These two opening songs were suitably accompanied by the quartet of piano (Eunmi Choi), cello (Wasia Ward), viola (Nariba Herbert) and acoustic guitar (Johnathon Agostini). That acoustic setting and the music created an ambience of a quiet music salon that may have been the norm for the original occupants of this Caribbean Castle more than a century ago.

Classical guitarist Stefan Roach provided a five-song interlude that highlighted, at some points, the ups and downs of having to quickly amend a perfect set-list to make room for Patasar’s unexpected non-appearance. French composer Paul de Senneville’s romantic solo piano song

Mariage d’amour was transposed to guitar to retain the elegant heartbeat of music for love. That was followed by the popular Die With a Smile by Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga that added a modern touch outside of the European co