October 21, 2003

A Master Class for Divas From an Ebullient Personality

oices as fervent as the bright, rich, gospel-schooled tenor of Billy Porter, who opened the fall season of Lincoln Center's American Songbook series on Thursday evening, are extremely rare, even in church. And when they coincide with a personality as ebullient as Mr. Porter's, every performance has the feel of an extravagant star turn.

Mr. Porter, who won a "Star Search" contest in 1992 and recently played a Sylvester-like disco singer in the Off Broadway show "Radiant Baby," identifies with divas like Patti LaBelle and Jennifer Holliday. One of the high points of Thursday's early show at the Kaplan Penthouse was his laugh-out-loud funny spoof of Ms. Holliday crying and growling her way through "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" in "Dreamgirls."

After the parody he admitted that watching Ms. Holliday's performance at the Tony Awards on television when he was 12 made him fall in love with Broadway: hence the title of his show, "At the Corner of Broadway and Soul," which combined original pop-soul songs with theater songs. The Broadway material included Stephen Sondheim's "Sunday," done with gospel flourishes, and a sizzling, Caribbean flavored "Last Midnight," from "Into the Woods," for which Mr. Porter auditioned for the role of the witch.

If Mr. Porter flirts with stylistic excess, he rarely goes over the line. Aspiring divas would do well to study his technique, in which gospel melisma is integral to the concept of a song and not the ornamental trinket it has become since the rise of Mariah Carey.

On Friday night Christine Ebersole brought her acclaimed cabaret act, which has already been seen at Arci's Place and the Cafe Carlyle, for a triumphant reprise. And on Saturday the singer and pianist Eric Comstock, augmented by a jazz trio, performed a suave, far-reaching program, "Singer-Songwriters, Now and Then," whose sources ranged from Fats Waller to Mel Tormé to Bob Dylan.

Essentially a crooner, Mr. Comstock filters everything he sings through an analytical lens, and most of the program was intellectually enlightening. He found a blasé new resonance in Randy Newman's "Political Science," a sardonic humor in Paul Simon's "I Do It for Your Love" and an adult anxiety in Carole King and Gerry Goffin's "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?" Other modern songs, including Mr. Dylan's "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight," which require a tougher, roots-oriented approach, resisted the soft treatment and came across as bland.