A slender, elfin figure with a broad smile and a pale blue shorts dress, she burrows her husky drawl deep into sultry material such as Naïve Soul, patently in thrall to the rich, warm music unfolding around her. Bizu grew up listening to Ella Fitzgerald and Amy Winehouse, and her own phrasing is similarly vivid and individualistic.
Patrons who relish the song and only get a smidgen of it have to be frustrated (I was), while it can't help ticket buyers who don't know the piece of sultry material to hear incompletely what they've been missing by not having the song stored in their memory banks before this.
Ditto her radical reworkings of the old songs: "Dress You Up" rode a fluttering flamenco groove; "Music" started out as a sultry supper-club ballad; "Material Girl" had staticky dubstep squelches.
In her two best moments on Thursday, she forsook contemporary material to deliver sultry but sunny renditions of "Sweet and Lovely" and "Mood Indigo".
Rather than go in for fussy decorative fireworks, Ms. Monheit kept things simple and sultry at Thursday's early show, unspooling the material (highlighted by an entrancing "I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good") in sinuous, finely turned phrases.
But in the second half of her show she returns to her own material ("Carnival" and "Jack Kerouac") and other contemporary songs, like Lucinda Williams's easygoing, sultry "Sweet Old World".
Her face, alternately sultry and friendly, gazes from the nation's hoardings to advertise DKNY perfume, Rimmel make-up, Superga sneakers, Material Girl clothing, Adidas sportswear, Coca-Cola and Samsung Galaxy.
But they also breeze through secular material, like "Silver Bells" and "The Chipmunk Song," and their "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" and "Silent Night" verge on sultry.
E-mail address GO SIGN UP Share Tweet JAZZ AND STANDARDS ALGONQUIN HOTEL 59 W. 44th St. (212-840-6800) — Through Maude0: Maggartaggarthethe sultry and sweet-voiced sister of the pop star Fiona Apple, performs "Speaking of Dreams," a new show featuring standards, along with material from the likes of Paul Williams and Joan Baez.
JAZZ AND STANDARDS ALGONQUIN HOTEL 59 W. 44th St. (212-840-6800) — Through Maude0: Maggartaggarthethe sultry and sweet-voiced sister of the pop star Fiona Apple, performs "Speaking of Dreams," a new show featuring standards, along with material from the likes of Paul Williams and Joan Baez.
