Barbra Streisand. My idol growing up. One of the performances during this 94 tour was at the Palace in Detroit. A friend in Chicago called and told me he could get 2 great seats from a broker. $500 per ticket. Sold. Sent him a check and had the tix Fed Exd to me. Same friends ex had moved to Detroit . Called her and she offered her home to us to stay. Called my sister and arranged for her to keep our 3-month old baby boy for 36 hours. Pumped milk, packed diapers, threw 2 bags together for us, grabbed all my Streisand tapes, and the next day we hit the road. Played every album she ever recorded for the road trip. (Giving and gracious was my husband.) Arrived at Palace. Long line. Security checks. Finally, inside. Massive stage set-up with a huge projection screen. Checked tickets to find seats. On the floor. Kept walking toward stage. Passed the soundboard area. Theres our seats, 13 rows from the stage on the floor, center. Sit. Wait. Stand. Wait. Fidgeting. Excited. My idol. Live orchestra starts tuning. Marvin Hamlisch, conducting on the tour, walks out. Scattered applause from those who recognized him. The energy in the place was palpable. He told me later that I looked like a very excited, beaming, happy little girl. That would be accurate. Then the lights went out...and I swear I felt my heart skip a beat. The orchestra began to play Stephen Sondheims Im Still Here from her The Broadway Album. The anticipation was beyond overwhelming. Applause, cheering, whistling blended into a cacophony of noise. My eyes darted back and forth across the stage. I was squeezing my husbands hand so tightly. And then, without introduction, a spotlight appeared on a small area stage right. The black curtain there was pulled back...and Barbra Streisand, in a long black dress with a white ribbon vertically down the middle, walked out. To thunder. The ovation was numbing. I felt tears streaming down my face. Non-stop. They just kept coming. I turned to my husband and he was grinning broadly at me, for he knew what this meant to me. I kept looking back and forth between her image on the screen and at her in person. Hello, Detroit! were her first words, a parody of her famous Hello, gorgeous line in Funny Girl. I stared at her, etching every detail into my mind to keep forever. For the next 2+ hours, she sang...that only-one-of-a-kind voice...and talked and told stories, all interlaced with her songs throughout the performance. At intermission, my husband walked back to the soundboard and struck up a conversation with the audio engineer. Sharing the same profession, they talked about equipment, dynamics, microphones, etc. He mentioned that his wife was a rabid fan sitting about 6 rows up. When he returned to his seat, he told me that the guy said to stop by when the show was over. He was going to give me the sheet that listed the songs to be performed for the second act. Hed said that the list was selected by Barbra for each show and she handwrote it. He was going to give it to me. (Its packed away upstairs in my collection.) Her last song was Papa Can You hear Me, from her film Yentl and written by Alan & Marilyn Bergman. It was a poignant performance in the film since her own father died when she was an infant. A screen was lowered from up high and the end scene from the movie played where she sang the same sing in the boat while traveling to America. Then she sang live with herself in the movie, like a mirror image. The two huge screens mirroring each other...the performance was stunning! A couple of days later, the Indianapolis Star called me to do a story about the concert. It appeared in the paper the next day. One of the questions the reporter asked me was what was so special about her that I would spend $1,000 on tickets and drive 5 hours to see her perform. I told him that she was my Sunday morning. What?, he asked. I said that what most people get from their religion or faith when they go to church on Sunday...the fulfillment, the contentment, the peace...I get it from her when I listen to her sing. That only-one-of-a-kind voice...it does something to me...it fills my spirit. Barbra Streisand...she was MY Sunday morning.
Posted on: Sun, 20 Jul 2014 17:37:37 +0000
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