Singer Ledisi helps the Philadelphia Orchestra close out its season in Philly with a tribute to Nina Simone at the Mann.
When Ledisi told the audience at the Mann Center on Friday night that “Nina Simone’s music saved my life,” she wasn’t being hyperbolic. The New Orleans-born, Oakland-raised singer recalled a low point in her life, when she was “sitting on the front porch of a house I couldn’t afford and figuring out a way to leave the Earth.”
The orchestra, under the baton of William Eddins, kicked off the evening with two pieces: the overture to George Gershwin’s musicaland an arrangement of Duke Ellington’s “Solitude” for strings. The Buffalo native then goaded the crowd with an ill-advised “Go Bills!” and an admonition for the Gershwin show’s failure on its initial run in Philly in 1927. Eddins won them back slightly with a plea to sign a new petition to grant Ellington the Pulitzer Prize he was denied in 1965.
The Rodgers and Hart classic “Little Girl Blue” was given a particularly dramatic treatment. The opening fanfare from “Good King Wenceslas,” an addition by Simone, was rendered by the Fabulous Philadelphians’ horns and woodwinds. Ledisi’s reading of the song was striking, plumbing the depths of her range for a mournful moan and ascending into an ethereal quaver.
The rest of the concert maintained that diversity of mood. An offhand “Here Comes the Sun,” harkening back to Ledisi’s shy schoolgirl days, was followed by a pointed “Work Song,” with the orchestra’s stabbing punctuation and a percussionist rattling actual chains. The wind itself seemed to emanate from Ledisi’s throat for a stark, vivid “Wild Is the Wind,” as her voice reached a high, keening moan.
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