Renée Fleming Warms a Chilly Night at the Shed

The soprano, with collaborators guitarist Bill Frisell, bassist Christian McBride and pianist Dan Tepfer, tried to create a jazz-club vibe at the socially distanced Hudson Yards venue with a mix of classical and popular fare.

By Heidi Waleson

April 22, 2021 3:49 pm ET

New York

There was a live, in-person performance at The Shed at Hudson Yards on Wednesday night, but first you had to show up exactly at your specified entry time; then wait, shivering, in line on the wind-whipped plaza as ushers scanned vaccination or negative Covid-19 test certificates and checked IDs; and, finally, get your temperature taken. Inside, the cavernous, airplane-hanger-like space felt similarly dark and chilly, with stone underfoot and dim, hazy lighting melting away toward the distant, invisible roof. Seats, single or in pairs, were separated by the regulation six feet. I kept my coat zipped; on the plus side, there was a luxurious amount of leg room. 

Soprano Renée Fleming and her virtuoso collaborators—guitarist Bill Frisell, bassist Christian McBride and pianist Dan Tepfer —did their best to create a jazz-club vibe, although they, too, were all separated onstage by six feet, and the miking balances were off, with the piano tinnily loud and the guitar too soft. Ms. Fleming’s stylings tended toward the careful; her eclectic, 80-minute program mixed nostalgia for what now seems like a very distant past, acknowledgment of the trauma of the past year, and a little bit of playfulness. It opened with a spare, meditative rendition of Maria Schneider’s “Perfectly Still This Solstice Morning,” from the song cycle “Winter Morning Walks,” the program’s most recent piece, then zoomed about three centuries backward in time for two brief Handel arias, “O Sleep, why dost though leave me?” from “Semele” and “Bel piacere e godere” from “Agrippina.” Both were smoothed into prettiness, with none of the characters’ manipulative sensuality in evidence, though Ms. Fleming had fun with ornaments in the “Agrippina” aria. 

A move into the American Songbook gave Ms. Fleming’s collaborators more scope, which was all to the good: Mr. Tepfer offered an elaborate improvisation between the verses of Jerome Kern’s intimate “All the Things You Are,” and Mr. McBride cut loose with a toe-tapping solo on Richard A. Whiting’s up-tempo “When Did You Leave Heaven?” 

One could feel Ms. Fleming’s intense connection to the next group of songs, all from her youth. Her voice opened up, embracing the complexities of revisiting the past. She was poignant in “Both Sides Now” by Joni Mitchell, whom Ms. Fleming cited in her introduction as a central inspiration for her artistic life; in Chuck Mangione’s big band number, “Land of Make Believe,” her optimism felt tempered by experience. Saddest of all was Sandy Denny’s wistful “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?”—which Ms. Fleming connected to the toll that the pandemic year has taken on artists unable to perform together and for others. 

The mood turned more upbeat for a virtuosic instrumental number: Miles Davis’s rollicking “ Donna Lee, ” featuring some ferocious licks from Mr. McBride. Ms. Fleming then invited each of her collaborators to say something about their year; it turns out that Mr. Tepfer and Mr. McBride have been playing together over the internet, including performing “Donna Lee” “even faster than we just did,” much to Mr. Frisell’s professed amazement. It was an amiably humanizing moment. 

The final set saluted New York institutions. First came the plaintive “Touch the Hand of Love” by Blossom Dearie, a staple of the city’s club scene of the 1960s. Next, the “Barcarolle” duet from Offenbach’s “Les Contes d’Hoffmann,” with Mr. McBride supplying a mellow, bowed mezzo line, was offered as a tribute to the Metropolitan Opera, which seems far from resurrection if indoor, seated audiences continue to be capped at 150. Finally, in Cole Porter’s “Down in the Depths (on the Ninetieth Floor),” Ms. Fleming playfully tossed in a little chest voice.

The encore, Stephen Foster’s haunting “Hard Times Come Again No More,” with Mr. Tepfer and Mr. McBride joining in on the vocal in the chorus, seemed to round out the program’s theme: a plea—it’s enough, already—but also the profound sense that things will never be what they were. In the darkness, the audience stood to applaud, sort of together, but still separate.

—Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).