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Review: Michael Feinstein leads Pasadena Pops to ‘New York, New York’

Michael Feinstein on the podium conducted the Pasadena Pops and also sang.
Michael Feinstein on the podium conducted the Pasadena Pops and also sang.
(Jenna Schoenefeld / For the Los Angeles Times)
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When the Pasadena Pops quickly signed Michael Feinstein to be its principal Pops conductor in 2013 following the death of his predecessor, Marvin Hamlisch, it looked like a coup and a gamble.

There was little doubt that Feinstein was going to draw crowds like no one before him at the Pops, but could someone who had never conducted before sustain the momentum while learning on the job?

A year and a few months into Feinstein’s tenure, the gamble looks to be a roaring success. The concept that he established in his first concert last year — exploring the highlights, nooks and crannies of American popular music — is proving to be infinitely flexible. It’s not so much a reimagining of a pops concert as it is refreshing the tradition with some diligent sleuthing.

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Likewise, Feinstein is becoming more flexible on the podium, still metronomic at times yet increasingly more comfortable and looser in movement as he reacts to the beat — and the Pops plays with real enthusiasm for him. Feinstein continues to draw; the lush L.A. County Arboretum space looked packed from front to rear Saturday night for a wide-ranging, season-ending “New York, New York” concert.

Feinstein’s New York program in a West Coast setting made no bones about its bicoastal contents, given that many Hollywood craftsmen were and are New York expatriates with unbroken emotional ties to the Big Apple. So Feinstein was able to fit in scoops like “American Barcarolle” — an attractive, sometimes harmonically complex, four-minute concert piece by Harry Warren, unperformed since its 1941 recording — or East Coaster-turned-Hollywood wit Oscar Levant’s sometimes quirky reconstructed main title music for the 1937 film “Nothing Sacred.”

Besides the archaeological digs and the occasional generic pops standby such as a Leonard Bernstein Broadway medley, there were swerves into big band jazz à la Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington and Count Basie; the jazzers within the Pops were able to cut loose and roar in the latter two. No Gershwin, but, hey, he was the sole subject of a Pops concert some weeks ago.

The guest singers exuded New York pizazz and poignancy. Patti Austin absolutely nailed the emotional content of the Shirley Horn vehicle “Here’s to Life.” Liz Callaway belted a young Stephen Sondheim’s love-hate rant about New York (“What More Do I Need”) from his 1955 show “Saturday Night.” Aaron Tveit straightforwardly crooned “Autumn in New York” to a recently excavated ‘30s-sounding Conrad Salinger film orchestration.

The whole evening was cleverly bracketed by the two famous “New York, New York” songs — first Bernstein’s in a swinging chart from the Andre Kostelanetz estate and lastly the Kander-Ebb flag-waver with Feinstein ebulliently singing it himself.

As always, Feinstein raided his highly retentive mind for dates, names and timely anecdotes; a very funny one described Ethel Merman’s bellicose reaction to the singing of Lauren Bacall. Yet his showbiz savvy made the carefully apportioned cascade of data entertaining, never overwhelming. This act is wearing very well.

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