{"id":12206,"date":"2014-05-15T13:44:08","date_gmt":"2014-05-15T20:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=12206"},"modified":"2014-05-15T13:44:39","modified_gmt":"2014-05-15T20:44:39","slug":"carpenters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2014\/05\/carpenters\/","title":{"rendered":"CARPENTERS"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"CarpentersCARPENTERS<\/b><\/h1>\n

Michelle Berting Brett Honors Their Legacy<\/h2>\n

\u201cEverybody knows all the songs,\u201d Michelle Berting Brett said the other night at B.B. King\u2019s an hour before taking the stage in her We\u2019ve Only Just Begun: Carpenters Remembered<\/i> concert show \u201ccelebrating the music of one of the most successful recording acts of all time,\u201d as her promo so accurately puts it.<\/p>\n

Sure enough, she had everyone singing along to \u201c(They Long to Be) Close to You,\u201d \u201cWe\u2019ve Only Just Begun,\u201d \u201cTop of the World,\u201d \u201cSuperstar,\u201d \u201cRainy Days and Mondays,\u201d \u201cGoodbye to Love,\u201d \u201cSing,\u201d \u201cSolitaire,\u201d \u201cI Won\u2019t Last a Day Without You,\u201d \u201cSweet, Sweet Smile,\u201d \u201cI Need to Be in Love,\u201d \u201cFor All We Know\u201d and their biggest-selling worldwide hit \u201cYesterday Once More.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Carpenters-2Co-written by Richard Carpenter, \u201cYesterday Once More\u201d evokes the classic rock \u2019n\u2019 roll, R&B and sophisticated pop\u2014\u201cThe Beatles, Beach Boys and Burt Bacharach,\u201d as Brett noted\u2014that so heavily influenced him. These were present in her faithful take on the Carps\u2019 great covers \u201cTicket To Ride\u201d and the \u201cBacharach\/David Medley\u201d from the 1971 <\/span>Carpenters<\/i> album (\u201cKnowing When to Leave,\u201d \u201cMake It Easy on Yourself,\u201d \u201c(There\u2019s) Always Something There to Remind Me,\u201d \u201cI’ll Never Fall in Love Again,\u201d \u201cWalk on By\u201d and \u201cDo You Know the Way to San Jose\u201d).<\/span><\/p>\n

To her credit, Brett never tried to conjure the ghost of Karen Carpenter.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of tribute shows are impersonation,\u201d she had said before the show. \u201cThat always disconnected me from the music: You can start to think, \u2018It\u2019s not really like her\u2019\u2014or whoever the artist is that the show is a tribute to. It becomes a tricky thing, which is why I do mine in the third person.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In other words, Brett doesn\u2019t put on a Karen Carpenter <\/span>act<\/i>; rather, she honors the \u201cwarmth, vulnerability, and purity\u201d of Carpenter\u2019s voice, while letting her seasoned seven-piece Nashville band\u2014including four former members of Donna Summer\u2019s band\u2014recreate Richard\u2019s genius \u201cmulti-layer arrangements and waterfall harmonies.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a few Carpenters tributes out there, but they\u2019re made up of part-time musicians or doing it on the side,\u201d noted Brett, who grew up on the music of The Carpenters on a farm in Saskatchewan. She later moved to Toronto and performed in musical theater and cabaret before meeting her husband and settling in Connecticut.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Carpenters-1\"\u201cFriends would say, \u2018Michelle, you sound like Karen Carpenter\u2019\u2014which was the ultimate compliment. I don\u2019t <\/span>really<\/i>\u2014no one does. But there\u2019s a similar color in my voice sometimes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

By creating <\/span>We\u2019ve Only Just Begun: Carpenters Remembered<\/i>, Brett has succeeded both in employing her Karen Carpenter vocal color and in extending her love of the \u201cAmerican Songbook,\u201d for really, that\u2019s what the Carpenters catalog is, what with writers like Bacharach-David, Paul Williams, Leon Russell, John Bettis, Neil Sedaka\u2014and Richard Carpenter himself\u2014having a hand in composing songs that have become American pop standards, as Brett and her audience proves.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jim Bessman<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CARPENTERS Michelle Berting Brett Honors Their Legacy \u201cEverybody knows all the songs,\u201d Michelle Berting Brett said the other night at B.B. King\u2019s an hour before taking the stage in her We\u2019ve Only Just Begun: Carpenters Remembered concert show \u201ccelebrating the music of one of the most successful recording acts of all time,\u201d as her promo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4976],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12206"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12206"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12210,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12206\/revisions\/12210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}