Concert at MCA an Arlen rainbow

It?s hard to believe that the same man who wrote the music to ?Over the Rainbow? also composed ?Blues in the Night? and ?Lydia the Tattooed Lady.?

But that?s Harold Arlen for you. His signature sound drew from jazz, pop, swing and the blues, and showed up in movies, on the stage and at the Cotton Club. He worked alongside Yip Harburg, Johnny Mercer, Ira Gershwin, Ted Koehler and Truman Capote ? and those are just the lyricists.

Arlen?s music and the singers who popularized it were honored Tuesday at the Maine Center for the Arts with the touring show ?Over the Rainbow: Celebrating a Century of Harold Arlen.? It?s fitting that the four singers for this concert brought a diversity of vocal talents to the music.

Broadway stars Tom Wopat (?Guys and Dolls? and ?Annie Get Your Gun,? as well as TV?s ?The Dukes of Hazzard?) and Faith Prince (?Guys and Dolls,? for which she won a Tony award) were the headliners, and they loaded the stage with Broadway sparkle and charm. For the opener, Prince and Wopat sang ?Let?s Fall in Love? after which Wopat set the casual mood for the night by talking with the audience. ?So, there?s a girls? basketball game tonight,? he said to the small house of 300. ?So what? You are going to get culture.?

He and his three singing partners, including the lesser known but immensely talented Barbara Morrison and Loston Harris, made good on that promise with renditions of ?A Woman?s Prerogative,? ?That Old Black Magic,? ?Get Happy,? and ?Happiness Is A Guy Named Joe.? The cheery five-piece band ? Tedd Firth on piano, Red Holloway on sax, Mark Whitfield on guitar, Steve LaSpina on bass and Steve Johns on drums ? was lissome and, apparently, limitless with this music.

The most sentimental segment of the evening was the tribute, with music and historic photos and movie clips, to Arlen?s score for ?The Wizard of OZ.? The music is so ingrained in the American psyche that it could be dangerous to re-imagine it in unfamiliar tempos and textures. This group blazed forward, giving Arlen his due while adding new vocal spins. When they finally offered ?Over the Rainbow? in four-part harmony, it was presented with a reverence usually reserved for religious hymns.

Some of the interpretations during this two-hour-plus revue leaned toward over-embellishment, but Harris? smooth vocals and lanky piano work on ?It?s Only a Paper Moon? and ?This Time the Dream?s on Me? were stunningly elegant and inviting. Even Wopat was at his best when he kept it simple in a tender, unmiked version of ?Last Night When We Were Young.?

It fell to Morrison to turn up the heat ? and she did with ?Blues in the Night? and the crowd-pleasers ?Buds Won?t Bud? and ?Stormy Weather.? Her steaming blues style and Prince?s unstoppable stage voice were an unlikely combination, but the two complemented each other with uncommon ease.