A version of this album review appears in Friday s Weekend Life section of The Oklahoman.
Kristin Chenoweth Coming Home (Concord Records)
For fans of Broadway Idina Menzel Dolly Parton.
Broken Arrow native Kristin Chenoweth's powerhouse voice and bubbly personality are spiked with a homecoming punch of emotion and exhilaration on her first live album Coming Home.
This is the most nervous I'm gonna just say it that I've ever been 'cause this is my family. I'm looking out at familiar faces and even those faces I don't know I know. You know she says with breathy giggles after blowing the ceiling off of the Broken Arrow Performing Arts Center with the effervescent I Could Have Danced All Night from the musical My Fair Lady.
Chenoweth's Concord Records debut was recorded during an August hometown stand that also was filmed for a concert special. Kristin Chenoweth Coming Home will make its TV premiere at 8 p.m. Friday on PBS including Oklahoma's OETA.
Performing in the venue's Kristin Chenoweth Theatre the Tony and Emmy winning singer/actress 46 shows off her versatility and interpretive prowess with the 15 track album sending her stunning soprano soaring to the rafters through show tunes ( Maybe This Time from the musical film Cabaret Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again from Phantom of the Opera American classics (Stephen Foster's Hard Times Come Again No More Over the Rainbow from The Wizard of Oz ) and even an electrifying disco duet with fellow belter Chelsea Packard (the Barbra Streisand Donna Summer hit No More Tears (Enough Is Enough) ).
In between each song Chenoweth constantly cracks up her fervent hometown fans with her famous comedic timing. Broken Arrow has changed a lot. It's grown a lot since I left. I didn't grow but it did the 4 foot 11 inch tall performer quips early in the show she later jokes that's why I'm in therapy when explaining that the male lead's anthem Bring Him Home was the selection from Les Miserables that resonated the most with her.
Her vivacious personality effervesces even more than usual as she sparkles through the fun stuff including two selections from her Broadway breakout Wicked a multilingual rendition of Popular and her signature audience duet on For Good with local girl Axyl Langford and her rather operatic version of the contemporary Christian number Upon This Rock featuring the Broken Arrow High School choir. She invites the choir to join her again on her customary closer the inspirational anthem I Was Here.
The Oklahoma girl goes country with her hauntingly stripped down reading of Dolly Parton's Little Sparrow and the ballad Fathers and Daughters from her 2011 country album Some Lessons Learned. Her voice occasionally wobbles with emotion on the latter as she serenades her dad Jerry with it.
The album's poignant highlight comes with her astonishing cover of Fred Ebb and John Kander's heartbreaker My Coloring Book which she dedicates to legendary Oklahoma City University voice professor Florence Birdwell. Chenoweth recalls that she wanted to sing the Streisand single in master class but Birdwell stopped her after the first line saying the performer didn't understand what she was singing about and shouldn't do the song until she did.
Ms. Birdwell I brought it. I brought the song. I think I got it now Chenoweth tells her former teacher before shattering everyone's heart with her passionate performance.
Chenoweth's voice goes thick with tears when she adds at the end She just gave me the thumbs up.
That thumbs up goes for the rest of us too.
BAM
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