Torch: Lina Koutrakos with Rick Jensen

by David Finkle

May 8, 2007

Climbing atop the piano during Torch - a first-Saturday-of-the-month Metropolitan Room stint continuing until July - Lina Koutrakos instantly conjures Helen Morgan. Not a new idea. Singers have followed Morgan's example ever since she set the style during the Jazz Age. In Koutrakos' case, however, director Mark Waldrop has had the right idea. Reminding patrons of her predecessor is tantamount to declaring she is to torch singing in 2007 what Morgan was in the 1920s and '30s. From anyone else, such a tacit declaration might seem presumptuous. From Koutrakos, it's a statement of fact.

Koutrakos sings these songs - many of them the heart-wrenchers you'd expect - as they should be sung. She understands something about the selections, something true of all sorts of tunes: They are one-sided conversations. Yes, she sings them, but as she sits on the piano or leans against it or moves away from it, she also tells them. When she opens with Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life," her throbbing quickly sets the threnody's jaded scene. When she sings "My Foolish Heart" (Ned Washington-Victor Young), she probes the psychology of someone realizing her current romance isn't another passing fancy but the real, astonishing thing.

Early in the set - with simpatico Rick Jensen doing his own brand of torching at the keyboard - Koutrakos offers an explanation of her affinity for the material. She says that when she was a youngster mesmerized by old movies on television, she was always drawn to "the bad girl with a heart of gold." Whatever it was that impressed her, the from-the-core-of-her-being versions of "Stormy Weather" (Ted Koehler-Harold Arlen), "It Had to Be You" (Gus Kahn-Isham Jones), "You Fascinate Me So" (Carolyn Leigh-Cy Coleman), "The Man That Got Away" (Ira Gershwin and Arlen), and "One for My Baby" (Johnny Mercer and Arlen) represent everything torch singing can be today.

Presented by and at the Metropolitan Room, 34 W. 22nd St., NYC. Oct. 7-July 7. (212) 206-0440.