By Sheryl Aronson
Edgemar Theater, Santa Monica –Steve Weisberg’s 17-piece orchestra Variety Show at the Edgemar Theater last Saturday night reminded me of the1960’s Laugh In Show meets the infamous play “Hair” meets Leonard Bernstein…meets Woodstock. There! In other words I have never laughed so much while being thoroughly enthralled with divine orchestration arrangements. Steve Weisberg is an insane Maestro.
Weisberg bounces around the stage like a musical Woody Allan directing his wild and crazy but superb musicians and guest vocalists. The Maestro can have a plunger in his hand as a baton, then a fairy wand and finally his favorite…a lovely bouquet of red roses. I’m just saying…
For two hours the Variety Show roared non-stop with performers like the Cages, a father and son singing team whose folk/rock/slightly funk harmonies brought me back to the beginnings of Crosby, Stills and Nash…then there was Jill Sobule with her mod cap and peace sign dress who ripped up the guitar like Jimi Hendrix but also reminded me of the girl in “Hair” who was trying to find the boy she loved in Central Park to tell him he didn’t need to return the $2.00 he borrowed…to Mocean.Worker (aka Adam Dorn)..whose bass playing and singing got so funky and down dirty you had to ask was Larry Graham in the house…to the sassy showgirl (who actually dances wilder than me!!!) “Venice’s Diva Deluxe”, Suzy Williams using her kitty cat jazz vocals to sing about pollution in the environment and then dancing like a chorus dancer whose tripping on acid rock…to the bluesy, classy, belt out like Bessie Smith soulful Donna Washington who ended the evening. And that’s just an inkling of what happened last night…
The divinely insane Maestro told me in an interview,
“Everything is part of the show…even when things go wrong. I feel it adds to the performance rather than take away.”
Wearing his classic black straw fedora hat, black shirt with two white stripes down each side, and dark trousers…Weisberg looked the part of the hip director who was eager to get down to business. He looked around a bit baffled as to where his soundman was
located. Then he said in his irreverent humor, “The show will start when the sound man stops eating.” A pause. Out from backstage, the man himself enters holding a sandwich in his hand. Weisberg quips, “This is the best part of the show, fixing the sound.”
Like a true Variety Show the 17 piece band played their theme song and we got our first glance at these superbly talented musicians. A jazzy free for all blew open with smoking solos from the trombone and sax player. Then the Maestro got up to the microphone and sang in a jazz standard voice a compostion he wrote about… bowling.
“Let go bowling, hey,” he crooned like Frankie Sinatra who let Frank Zappa write the lyrics.
And a big band composition emerged about he and his honey loving each other side by side at the alley, wearing their bowling shoes. What a riot!
When petite blonde haired singer/songwriter/guitarist, Jill Sobule sang, “I might body slam you and cause you physical harm …I can crack your ribs…but I’ll never break your heart…” tears rolled down my eyes from laughing so hard. Her honest raw lyrics about being broken hearted mixed with her mocking tone cracked everyone up.
Mocean Worker introduced himself as, “I am a balding Jew playing funk.” He got everyone up and dancing with his “Chick a Boom Boom” song.
This is not to say Weisberg’s orchestra didn’t play some serious works of music. We heard the marvelous jazz composer Carla Bley’s Drinking Music, which was colored with a French cabaret flavor ringing with rich chords that depicted a man walking down a street after consuming too much alcohol. The music rolls along slowly…weaving…in and out…some discordant sounds as if he might fall. Quite charming, yet full of subtle musical dynamics that show off Weisberg’s talent as an arranger. His orchestra also played Weisberg’s original piece Transition and Charles Mingus’s Pythecanthropus Erectus. All three arrangements were heavy-duty jazz compositions.
To top off this hilarious and outlandish evening of fun, Steve Weisberg honored his beautiful wife, Sherril Schlesinger, with a song called After All These Years. The couple was celebrating their 11th wedding anniversary.
I LOVED EVERY MINUTE OF THIS INSANELY DIVINE MAESTRO’S VARIETY SHOW. ED SULLIVAN IS SAYING FROM ABOVE…”WE HAVE A REALLY BIG SHOOOOW FOR YOU TONIGHT…BE READY TO LAUGH, DANCE, BE EMERGED IN GORGEOUS MUSIC, AND FROLIC.
You can find Steve Weisberg and his music at: www.sworchestra.com
See my other article on Steve Weisberg in The Hollywood Times:
http://thehollywoodtimes.net/2015/10/07/an-evening-musical-variety-show-with-steve-weisberg/
Photo Credit: Sheryl Aronson/ The Hollywood 360