An Evening With Amy

The Brisbane Music Festival usually spotlights classical music, but last night at St John’s Cathedral, music fans were treated to a selection of modern classic love songs, performed to perfection by Amy Lehpamer. Amy was joined by the star musical team of Alex Raineri on feisty electric keys and Luke Carbon on a scrumptious selection of woodwind instruments. Amy settled in to her showcase with Cole Porter’s ‘Night and Day’, before working her way through some stage show tunes from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s ‘Wonderful Guy’ (South Pacific) and Harnick & Bock’s ‘Vanilla Ice Cream’ from She Loves Me (the musical inspired by Miklos Laszlo’s Parfumerie, which itself inspired the films The Shop Around the Corner and You’ve Got Mail). Amy has such a versatile voice, resilient to all the challenges our modern composers craft into their wares. I feel like she could take on any show tune, but for me she really hit her sweet spot with a perfect pairing of Burt Bacharach’s ‘The Look of Love’ and ‘Alfie’ before taking a break to hand over the stage to Alex and Luke.

This pair of musicians have worked together before and recorded their Liquid Crystal album during the lockdown years, so they are very comfortable improvising and having fun. This time it was Alex’s new arrangement of possibly my favourite piece of music, George Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’. A brilliant performance. Alex set the pace with fast keyboard work, and Luke kept in stride, a one-man woodwind section, grabbing the flute, bass clarinet, saxophone, then the clarinet for those glorious Gershwin crescendos.

When Amy returned, it was to shade the themes of love a tad darker with an oddly ideal coupling of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hey That’s No Way to Say Goodbye’ with the Judy Garland classic by Harold Arlen, ‘The Man That Got Away’. These lower-register numbers suit Amy’s voice so well. The next musical break was a version of rap star Lizzo’s ‘Cuz I Love You’ arranged by Luke, with a nod and a wink to many musical sampled styles. Another great musical interlude.

The atmosphere in St John’s Cathedral was very much family friendly, with the Festival’s sponsors and supporters, family and friends, in the crowd, including Amy’s new baby who pleased his parents by being very well-behaved throughout the show. We now know that Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer’s ‘Moon River’ is his favourite song and it was a beautiful version by Amy. The final trio of songs included an absolutely belting Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Being Alive’ and a sing-along-worthy rendition of Carole King’s ‘A Natural Woman’.

Fittingly, this final selection echoed Amy’s musical theatre CV – having started her stage musical career in Follies in 2008, Amy worked her way through several shows to Once and Dusty before winning the Helpmann Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Musical for her performance as Cynthia Weil in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical in 2018. Amy has played roles ranging from the free-spirited Maria in The Sound of Music to the uptight Principal Mullins in School of Rock (2018–2020). She has a luminous, pitch-perfect voice, with the versatility to take on any style. While the cathedral’s PA system meant that the high-vaulted eaves received the angels’ share of vocals last night, that didn’t detract too much from the superb work on show. I hope the video recording of the performance will be made available – and I’d love to see this trio perform together again soon.

There are only a handful of performances remaining in this year’s Brisbane Music Festival, which closes on 17 December with Saturday Sonatas and Vortex at the Merthyr Road Uniting Church, New Farm.

Beth Keehn

Photographer: Jai Farrell

Find out more: https://brismusicfestival.com