We Got Bruce
Bruce Vilanch On Jennifer Holiday At The Catalina Club (Aug 2024)
By Bruce Vilanch
Sept 1, 2024
jennifer holliday has been in the business 47 years and tonight i saw her give one of the greatest stage performances i’ve ever seen she was at the catalina jazz club in hollywood, to a packed house, and unlike other performances — we’ve done about a thousand benefits together — she didn’t sing to track, she had six musicians and three backup singers and she just didn’t do a show, she told her story. she started with feelin good and followed it with i’m still here, some personalized lyrics of course, and from then on every single number was about something real that has happened to her along the way and every single one was a showstopper. she’s 64 and sings like she’s 21, and she looks fabulous. this is her lena horne show, for those of you who remember’s lena’s one-woman broadway evening. like lena, she spills all the tea, she makes you cry, she makes you laugh and the honesty of it is bracing. she sings all the things you expect, with subtle, but fresh changes from the reccordings you may have memorized. she tells you how the songs happened and what happened to her life because of the songs. it’s an utterly unafraid presentation of a career, and she has had one with the highest highs and the lowest lows. f you hear she’s working near you, just go. you will have one hell of a workout jumping to your feet and cheering . hopefully, somebody will film this
