Patti LuPone listened to all kinds of music growing up, was there for the genesis of rock and roll, but says her destiny was clear.
“I knew that I’d end up on the Broadway stage.. Because it’s not a rock and roll voice.”
Now the three-time Tony Award winner her her leading roles in Company, Gypsy and Evita, is coming to Houston’s Hobby Center with her one-woman show Patti LuPone: a Life in Notes. It’ll be her first time to play Houston.
The show is brand new, she says. “There are songs I’ve never sung before. I mean I’ve sung them in my house but never in front of people.”
The show is designed to take her through decades, she says. It’s not her first solo outing; every three or four years she has to come up with a new show. Previous ones included Matters of the Heart, Lady With a Torch, Farawy Places and Don’t Monkey With Broadway.
Besides wanting to have something different for audiences, she says “It’s also creatively satisfying to learn new music or songs that you might never sing.”
The premise of this show is that every decade there’s a memorable song that was special to LuPone or described her life at that time.
“The show’s about the songs that when you hear them again you remember exactly where you were or who you were with, how old you were, how they affected you. Music can crystalize a moment in time. These are some of the moments of my life.”
She has a longstanding team that helps her create and perform these one-woman shows.
“I work with the same director [Scott Wittman], the same musical director [Joseph Thalken] who also arranged the songs and the writer[(Jeffery Richman] and we’ve been doing this for at least 15 years. “
She tries to make each song her own. “It’s the same thing if I’m at a revival of a musical. I try to do it differently. I don’t want to imitate another singer. I want to make it my own.”
Accompanying her will be a pianist and a string instrumentalist who plays the mandolin, guitar, the violin, electric bass, she says. Before she sings each song she explains why she’s singing it and something about the decade in which it was written. It starts with the ’50s.
LuPone has had a wide and varied career. Besides all her performances and accompanying awards (two Olivier Awards Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle awards as well as the Tonys) in musical theater, the Julliard graduate has appeared in films (The School for Good and Evil, Driving Miss Daisy, Witness) and television and streaming shows (Penny Dreadful, American Horror Story and the upcoming series The Darkhold Diaries) to name just some.
She still meets people who’s association with her is from watching her in Life Goes On, a family drama set in mid-Western suburbia that ran from 1989-93 and won two Emmys.
She likes modern Broadway productions but feels the bands often overpower the singers, destroying any chance of hearing the lyrics. “How can you sing with a full orchestra playing?”
Her biggest surprise in doing this show? “I’m crying too much. I find it really emotional because it takes me back. It might take people back to their own experiences in music. It might take them back to something that affected them deeply. I hope it does.”
And, in case you’re wondering, in what should be no surprise, there will be a selection from Evita.
Patti LuPone: a Life in Notes is scheduled for 7: 30 p.m. March 21 at the Hobby Center, 800 Bagby. For more information, call 713-315-2525 or visit hobbycenter,org. $44-$64.
Margaret Downing
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