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Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular MusicA B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y ZMARCOVICCI, Andrea(b 18 November 1948, NYC) Actress and singer of cabaret tending towards a torch style. One source cites 1949 as her year of birth. Her mother was a singer, father a doctor; she attended Bennett College, studied acting with Herbert Berghof, and began acting on TV in 1967, appearing in TV series and TV movies; her best film role was as Woody Allen's girlfriend in The Front '76. Meanwhile she had been a folksinger, 'inflicting my own ghastly songs on people' when not covering Joni Mitchell or Judy Collins, She appeared in musicals such as Nefertiti (by David Spangler and Christopher Gore) in Chicago in the mid-'70s, and Dance On A Country Grave, which opened in Chicago on New Year's Eve 1974. The latter show, written and composed by Kelly Hamilton, was orchestrated by Eddie Sauter; Marcovicci got the best reviews of her stage career, and the show itself, based on Thomas Hardy's Return Of The Native, always gets good reviews, revived several times in regional theaters. But although it has been optioned three times for Broadway and twice for London, no producer has yet been able to put a deal together. Tiring of the TV movies, her love of singing, the radiant folk clarity of her voice and her ability to size up songs came to the fore. She concentrated on singing from the late 1980s and immediately began recording, her appearances in London's cabaret rooms highly praised as well as at American spots such as the famed Algonquin in NYC. Her albums began with Marcovicci Sings Movies* (1987) and What Is Love on DRG, Always Irving Berlin, Just Kern and December Songs on Elba. I'll Be Seeing You (1990), New Words (1994), Live From London* and Some Other Time: Marcovicci Sings Ethel Merman (both 1998) and Here There & Everywhere (2000) are all on Cabaret. She likes to tailor the show to the audience: in cabaret, she said, 'People need to hear ''As Time Goes By''. They need to be soothed,' whereas in a concert hall with an orchestra 'they're more open to new songs.' She likes to sing the songs straight; of 'Smoke Gets In Your Eyes' she said, 'It never fails to surprise me. It breaks my heart every time.' Her show Ten Cents A Dance: A Tribute To Ruth Etting premièred in London in 1996, went to NYC, then to the San Francisco bay area in '97. (Quotes from an interview with Lloyd Sachs in the Chicago Tribune.) Further albums have included How's Your Romance? (2004) and If I Were A Bell: The Songs Of Frank Loesser* (2005) on Original Cast Records. *These albums were recorded live, the Loesser show in the Oak Room at the Algonquin; all but the Sings Movies album contain some of her stage patter, in which she sometimes tells us things about the songs we didn't know. |