Michael Feinstein is one of the most in-demand crooners in the land. If people want sophistication, elegance and abundant love and knowledge of the Great American Songbook, they immediately turn to Feinstein.

For more than 20 years, Feinstein has reigned as the King of Cabaret, the Sultan of Standards and the Torch Bearer for Torch Songs.

A formidable interpreter of American classics from Gershwin to Berlin to Jimmy Webb (yes, he pays attention to modern songwriters as well), Feinstein is also an incredible storehouse of facts and lore. He has invested years in preserving the legacy of America’s greatest songwriters, and he recently created the Feinstein Foundation for the Preservation of American Popular Music to do just that.

But at the moment, all of his good works for American song are taking a back seat to his other career: showman.

On Saturday he finishes up the run of his annual holiday show at his New York nightclub, Feinstein’s at Loew’s Regency, and Sunday he flies to San Francisco, where he’ll have one rehearsal before he performs at 7 p.m. at Davies Symphony Hall with the San Francisco Symphony. He’ll repeat the show the following night, New Year’s Eve.

“This is how I like to experience the holidays,” Feinstein says. “I like to see the holidays through the eyes of audience members who all have different things they appreciate about this time of year. I sing the songs and look into the eyes of the people, see their reaction to the music. That’s much more fulfilling than sitting at home looking at a Christmas tree.”

Feinstein, 51, is officially bicoastal. He has an Upper East Side home in Manhattan, and in Los Angeles, he lives in what used to be the Russian consulate.

“Kruschev slept there,” Feinstein says.

In his late 20s, when he was starting to break out of piano bars and gain some notice, Feinstein played San Francisco’s Plush Room, which was then newly reopened.

“I was having a whale of a time then,” Feinstein recalls. “It was a great, magical room for connecting with audiences. I have so many memories from there. Sammy Cahn came in one night. Milton Berle came in and ended up doing 20 minutes. Irene Manning of Yankee Doodle Dandy came in. Herb Caen wrote about me, `The kid’s got it,’ and it was like being anointed by the Pope. All the intelligentsia, the movers, shakes and money of San Francisco were there.”

Feinstein remembers that era as having “a heightened sense of joy. It was before the world had changed, before the city had changed and before the worst of AIDS. It will never be that again.”

One New Year’s Eve, Feinstein recalls playing the Plush when Joan Fontaine (Rebecca), the actress, was squired into the room.

“She was an old-guard Hollywood actress, bowing and waving, and she was seated down front by the piano. She was drinking Champagne, and as the evening progressed, she got loopy and drunk, then kind of quieted into a stupor. Then she was bubbling like a tea kettle, mumbling under her breath. She started heckling me and told me, `Shut up! You can’t play. Get off the stage.’ I went from being thrilled to having Joan Fontaine in the audience to praying she would pass out.”

This New Year’s Eve promises to be a little less belligerent.

“Working with the symphony in one of my favorite cities is fantastic,” Feinstein says. “I’m a romantic, and New Year’s Eve should be romantic and celebratory. One of the songs we’ll be singing is `Here’s to Us’ and another is `The Folks Who Live on the Hill.’”

Keeping songs like those alive is of paramount importance to Feinstein, who has amassed an impressive collection of American song-related artifacts. Recently he bought what was left of a collection of production discs from the MGM musical days that include outtakes and demos.

“There’s no money in preservation,” Feinstein says, which is why he created a foundation to spearhead a national effort. “If it’s not The Wizard of Oz and not deemed viable to turn a profit, nobody’s interested.”

Though classic American song — what many call standards — is still alive and well, more attention needs to be paid, Feinstein says.

“New audiences are discovering this music all the time — they hear it at the movies and on TV,” he says. “It’s such adaptable music. It can survive Rod Stewart and other mediocre interpretations, which still get the music out there and please millions of people. People get something from this music like they do from Beethoven, Shakespeare or Picasso. There’s a unique value to it, not limited to a certain age group.”

Twenty years ago, Feinstein wondered if he’d have an audience in the future because his brand of music seemed to appeal so strongly with older people. And though older people continue to connect with the music, younger people are constantly discovering it.

“I still have an audience and will continue to have an audience,” Feinstein says. “This music will endure. There’s no doubt in my mind.”

Upcoming for Feinstein: He’s working with his pal Liza Minnelli on a CD of songs by Minnelli’s godmother, the great Kay Thompson; he’ll perform in London next month at Feinstein’s at the Shaw, a newly christened performance space; he’s producing a documentary on the late Kitty Carlisle Hart; and his musical, Perspectives, will likely have its debut in London’s West End.

Michael Feinstein and the San Francisco Symphony shows are at 7 p.m. Dec. 30 and 9 p.m. Dec. 31 at Davies Symphony Hall. Tickets are $20 to $175. Call 415-864-6000 or visit www.sfsymphony.org.

For more information on Feinstein, visit his Web site at www.michaelfeinstein.com.

This weekend just past in San Francisco was a good one for those of us who savor larger-than-life lady singers.

On Saturday, Jennifer Holliday, the Tony Award-winning original Effie Melody White in Dreamgirls, made a rare concert appearance in San Francisco.

The Herbst Theatre was jam packed with Holliday lovers, though the show started out on shaky ground. The band launched into a slow version of “One Night Only” from Dreamgirls, and after about 15 minutes the audience was wondering where the star was? The musical director kept looking back into the wings to see if Holliday was ready yet.

Finally, one of the three backup singers offered a subtle nod, and out came Holliday. For the next two-plus hours, this former Dreamgirl detonated one musical explosion after another. She dusted off some older solo material, like “I Am Love” and “Come Sunday,” and shined up some standards (”Come Rain or Come Shine,” “A Tisket, a Tasket,” “The Nearness of You,” “How High the Moon”).

Everything Holliday sings, she, in her words, “Jenniferizes” it, which is to say, she sings the bloody h— out of it. She has to choose her material carefully (and she does), because she loads up a whole lot of vocal weight and interpretation on the song’s framework. And the song has to be strong to bear up. Holliday almost becomes possessed when she sings, and she takes a song to places you had no idea it could go.

I lost track of the standing ovations. At first it was fans in the first row (and my date) standing after almost every song. Then it was all of us, standing, cheering, whooping and hollering. She did a tribute to Stax records and threw in a little Elvis love with an extraordinary “The Wonder of You.”

Holliday threw in a Christmas tune (”This Christmas”) and, of course, sang her Dreamgirls songs: I am Changing (all I can say is this: wow) and, as her encore, “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going”).

I honestly can’t tell you why this woman isn’t a superstar. She’s had bad luck, bad timing and, if rumors can be believed, some true diva moments. But there are undboutedly more difficult people out there who have a lot less talent than Jennifer Holliday.

Someone please get her an extraordinary career.

And on Sunday night at Davis Symphony Hall, Queen Latifah, the Oscar-nominated star of Chicago and Hairspray, made a stop on her mini-tour in support of her latest disc, the standards collection “Trav’lin’ Light.”

Dressed in a black blouse, black slacks and spiky black heels, the warm and funny Latifah impressed with her selection of standards (”I Love Being Here with You,” “Lush Life,” “I’m Gonna Live Til I Die,” “Trav’lin’ Light”), rough blues (”Baby Get Lost”), gentle blues (”Georgia Rose”), funk (”Mercy, Mercy, Mercy”) and the tunes we call show (”I Know Where I’ve Been” from Hairspray).

She also made some missteps. She ended the set with a limp “California Dreamin’” and stretched out “Simply Beautiful” to interminable length and allowed her backup trio (all terrific, but do they all really need solos?) their moments in the spotlight. But it was, frankly, boring.

And she didn’t sing “When You’re Good to Mama,” her song from Chicago. She had time for Phoebe Snow’s “Poetry Man” but not for Matron Mama Morton? Come on, Queen!

Read our music critic Jim Harrington’s review of the Queen Latifah concert here.

For Jennifer Holliday, the original Effie White in Broadway’s Dreamgirls, life has had its share of nightmare moments.

Only 19 when the tumultuous Dreamgirls development process began, and 21 when the show opened in 1981, Holliday became an instant Broadway legend as soon as audiences heard her sing the show’s standout anthem, “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going.”

Holliday stayed with the show for three years, and though she won the Tony Award for best actress in a musical, she was unhappy and isolated — a long way away from her Houston, Texas, roots.

And her weight was an issue. Holliday has estimated that at her heaviest, she was 330 pounds or more.

After a string of failures — her recording career never took off, a Broadway-bound show about Mahalia Jackson self-destructed, her nine-month marriage ended in divorce — Holliday attempted suicide on her 30th birthday.

“I caught a lot of bad breaks,” Holliday says in a phone interview. “Some of it was bad luck. Some of it was other people’s stuff. And there’s my accountability for my own faults and mistakes. I’m making no excuses for anything.”

Diagnosed with clinical depression, Holliday began to turn her life around. She lost nearly 150 pounds (through diet and, later, gastric bypass surgery) and bounced back.

The bounce didn’t take her to Dreamgirls heights, but she has managed to eke out a career.

“My primary living has been through corporate dates — private concerts — and events for the gay community,” says Holliday, 47. “A lot of people think I disappeared, but I’ve been working.”

When the movie version of Dreamgirls finally came out last year — 25 years after Holliday’s splash on Broadway — she was back in the news expressing unhappiness about having been shut out of the movie (only Loretta Devine, another of the original Dreamgirls, made a cameo in the film).

“My anger was directed against Paramount and (director) Bill Condon, the people who tried to say: `She’s too old, let’s forget about her and everything she did and built and struggled for and fought for.’ ”

But Holliday has let her anger subside. One thing that helped was singing “And I Am Telling You…” on a BET awards show earlier this year with Jennifer Hudson – “the other Jennifer” — who won an Oscar for playing Effie, the part Holliday helped create.

The two divas stood side by side and belted out the song as if their lives depended on it.

“That was a victorious thing for me,” Holliday says. “More like an Ali-Frazier fight. I was like, `OK, we’re gonna part as friends, but one will leave with the other’s ass kicked.’ For me, this was a victory bout — one for the veterans, the people my age and older who don’t want to be forgotten. We can still do what we do and not be put out to pasture.”

All the attention from the Dreamgirls movie has given Holliday’s career a bump. She’s performing more concerts now, and Saturday (Nov. 24) she’s at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco.

Of course she’ll sing her Dreamgirls songs, as well as some of the R&B selections from her various albums and some jazz standards, including a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald.

“Whatever I’ve gone through, for whatever reason, I sing better now because of it,” Holliday says. “I would have liked to have not gone through a lot of those things, but I have to admit, my music and songs have more meaning for me now. I think I sing from a different place.”

A resident of Harlem, Holliday does not have a manager or a publicist. She doesn’t have a cell phone or a computer. She does have a MySpace page (www.myspace.com/thejenniferholliday), and she checks it during weekly visits to Kinko’s.

“I’m rebuilding my career,” she says. “I’m finally learning how to make my life work as a human being, even with my depression, even with my career not being where I’d like it to be. Through MySpace and YouTube, I have made new fans, young fans. I have a new lease on life, if not success. The true success story is that I’m alive. That’s the greatest thing I can tell you at this point.”

This Dreamgirl, Holliday says, is happy at last.

“What the future holds, I can’t tell you,” she says. “But I do know at this moment, I’m the happiest I’ve been for so many years.”

Jennifer Holliday performs in concert at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco. Tickets are $37.50 to $77.50. Call 415-392-4400 or visit www.theempireplushroom.com for information.

When I’m not at the theater, chances are I’m at a concert. This week I finally got to see one of my favorite artists live at the Fillmore in San Francisco.

Bird watching at the Fillmore has its rewards, especially if the bird in question is Andrew Bird, one of pop music’s mavericks.

Few singer-songwriters multi-task the way Bird does in concert. He sings and plays the guitar. Nothing unusual there. He also plays the violin like a mad genius, whistles with the clarity and purity of a flute and — here’s the real distinction — plays the glockenspiel.

Bird’s sold-out Fillmore show Tuesday follows buzz-worthy appearances at the big music festivals: South by Southwest in Texas and last weekend’s Coachella in southern California.
Tuesday’s hour and 45-minute show featured Bird — sort of the thinking person’s James Blunt _ ably supported by bassist Jeremy Ylvisake and percussionist and electronics whiz Martin Dosh.

Here’s how a typical Bird song — let’s choose “Fiery Crash,” a cheery number about the fear of flying _ goes in concert. Bird lays down a musical foundation using a multi-track loop. He’ll record a few interesting measures on his violin and, using his feet to control the buttons, play them back and add some whistling and/or glock.

The resulting sound can make Bird’s violin sound like a chamber orchestra. Combine that with his Silvertone electric guitar and the other sounds, and he’s a one-man marching band.

Pulling primarily from 2005’s “Andrew Bird and the Mysterious Production of Eggs” and this year’s “Armchair Apocrypha,” Bird and his band turned what are, on the record, three- and four-minute gems into protracted loops of sound that push, pull and swirl into musical tornadoes.

Not every tune got the full-on, multi-layered treatment. “Heretics” provided a welcome oasis of straightforward, no-frills pop (that called to mind the Belle & Sebastian sound), but for the most part, Bird concentrated on turning songs like “Masterfade,” “Plasticities” and “Dark Matter” into jams that _ as jams often do _ began to sound alike.

Sometimes the bombast worked in a song’s favor, as on the epic “Scythian Empires,” which blossomed under Bird’s symphonic treatment.

But other tunes, such as “Fake Palindromes” and “Armchairs,” grew wearying, and though the likable Bird is capable of a sort of dry, intellectual humor — he paused Tuesday night to introduce the audience to a fan-created sock monkey dressed in a suit and carrying a violin case — his musical approach is deadly serious, and he often seemed lost in a sonic world of his own creation.

Such commitment to the creation of interesting sounds is one of the reasons Bird’s albums are so rich and fulfilling. But in concert, Bird tends to fly off in loop-the-loops, leaving his audience behind — entertained but not quite satisfied.

For a guy who used to play with the retro-swing band the Squirrel Nut Zippers, you hold out hope that he’ll lighten up some, or at least lay off the special effects. Whistling is great and so is a glockenspiel, but do we need to hear them on song after song?

Andrew Bird is what you might call an NPR rocker. He’s got talent and gusto and brains to spare, but there comes a point in his live show when you want less challenge, less complexity and more simple beauty, which is already there — it’s just a little overwhelmed.

Visit Andrew Bird’s official Web site at www.andrewbird.net.

Here’s Mr. Bird in action:

In New York recently, I had an amazing experience with Ricky Ian Gordon, an extraordinary composer who has written for the theater (My Life with Albertine, Dream True) and for the opera (his adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath recently premiered at Minnesota Opera).

Sitting in the apartment he shares with his boyfriend, Kevin, Gordon was talking about his upcoming trip to Berkeley — he performs alongside fellow composer Jake Heggie and Alameda’s resident opera star, Frederica von Stade, on Sunday, April 29, as part of the Cal Performances season — and he brought up a poem by James Schuyler called “Virginia Woolf” that he had set to music and that will be performed on Sunday.

Being a man of music, just talking about the song was insufficient, so he got up and sat at his spinet piano and indicated that I should sit next to him. Then he played the song and sang it full out.

The experience of sitting next to a composer performing his own work is mesmerizing, and the song itself, full of the intricate, haunting melodies Gordon is famous for, is spectacular. If Sunday’s version is anything like Gordon’s, the audience at Hertz Hall on the UC Berkeley campus should be blown away.

Gordon says his half of the concert will be typically him, which is to say, a little bit of a lot of things.

He’ll be joined by Heggie on a four-hand piano piece, “Ring-a-Ding-Ding,” followed by vocal performances by von Stade and others of songs with texts by Emily Dickinson, James Agee, Stanley Kunitz, Edna St. Vincent Milay and others.

There won’t be anything from his well-received The Grapes of Wrath (libretto by Michael Korie), although that epic endeavor will arise again in Utah next month and in Pittsburgh and Houston in 2008 and 2009, respectively.

So how does a composer like Gordon, with feet in both worlds, decide if something is musical theater or opera?

“There’s nothing I can’t do in the theater, but I do feel often like there’s this thing you face with musicals: the critics,” Gordon says. “You’re writing for critics who don’t know how to write or talk about music. I often feel musically misunderstood in the theater.”

There were parts of The Grapes of Wrath, Gordon says, that sounded like musical theater, but musical theater along the lines of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess or Weill’s Street Scene.

“My vocabulary includes music in the American vernacular,” Gordon says. “There are moments when it sort of explodes in operatic texture, while other moments could feel like a musical. Then you’re back into an aria. The truth is, that is so my aesthetic. To me, that’s me doing what I do. I had room to spread out in this opera and just be so Ricky. That’s what was totally fun about it.”

Just because he’s found success in the modern opera world (the Metropolitan Opera has even been sniffing around), Gordon insists he has not forsaken the world of musical theater.

He and Korie (also the lyricist for the Broadway hit Grey Gardens) are working with playwright Craig Lucas on a commission for the Signature Theatre about a major choreographer at the end of his life trying to come to terms with who he has been as a human being and an artist.

He’s also working with the director/writer Tina Landau on spiffing up an old project, “States of Independence,” and creating another opera, Morning Star, with William Hoffman.

“Yeah, I have a lot coming up,” Gordon says. “I’m going to sort of do it all.”

Theater in Song: Music by Jake Heggie and Ricky Ian Gordon is at 3 p.m. April 29 in Hertz Hall on the UC Berkeley campus near Bancroft Way at College Avenue. Tickets are $62. Call (510) 642-9988 or visit www.calperformances.net.

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day today, and to celebrate the work of my favorite singer-songwriter, I’m posting my review of Patty Griffin’s concert Friday night at the Warfield in San Francisco. There is a theater tie-in: she’s writing a Broadway musical for the Atlantic Theatre in New York that’s supposed to begin performances in May.

Singular singer-songwriter Griffin shines in S.F. birthday concert

You might not recognize the lady in the goofy party hat as one of this country’s finest singer-songwriters. In fact, you might not recognize her at all — with or without the festive headgear.

If you don’t know Patty Griffin, you may know some of her songs. The Dixie Chicks are big fans and have recorded Griffin’s “Let Him Fly,” “Truth No. 2” and “Top of the World.” Even Jessica Simpson found post-Nick solace in “Let Him Fly.”

Other pop mavens _ Bette Midler, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris among them _ have recognized Griffin’s distinctive voice, yet she remains an obscure treasure. She has her fans to be sure, lots of them.

The Bay Area Griffin contingent turned out in force last Friday at the Warfield in San Francisco for what turned out to be a giant birthday party. The day before St. Patrick’s Day happens to be Griffin’s birthday (hence her first name, Patricia).

She turned 43 during her swing through the Bay Area to promote the new album, “Children Running Through,” which happens to be her best collection of songs yet — and that’s saying something. She hasn’t really written a bad song, but they just keep getting better and deeper.

Dressed in a festive green ’50s-style dress with a belt and a full skirt, the ever-ebullient redhead was treated to an impromptu birthday serenade from the audience, and during the encore, her band offered her a cake complete with candles (not 43) and a balloon.

Funny thing is, though, Griffin was the one doling out the presents. Her 100-minute set, accompanied by a four-piece band (guitar, electric bass, upright bass and drums), was full of tuneful treasures from the new album and from her rich catalogue.

Though her musicianship is superb — she played both acoustic guitar and piano — and her clarion voice remains as bright and strong as ever, Griffin’s greatest strength is her ability to tell stories that convey mood and emotion through perfectly matched words and notes.

Now, you might think all songs do that, but they don’t. You can have good words and a nice melody, but the two don’t necessarily work to tell the same story.

When Griffin sings a song like “Burgundy Shoes” off the new album, for instance, she begins quietly, conveying a childhood memory about an early spring bus trip with her mom from their Maine home into the nearest town, which happened to be Bangor.

There’s a childlike simplicity to the song, but complexity enters in as memories return: her mother’s red lipstick, the coldness of the vinyl seat, a hummed pop song (the Beatles’ “Michelle”). And then there’s a burst of pure joy in the repetition of a single word: sun.

It’s a gorgeous song, and Griffin sings it with the kind of intimate passion that she brings to most of her material. Though sad songs about flawed people struggling to hold on to some kind of faith or hope are her specialty, Griffin can let loose when she wants to.

Some of her more upbeat moments Friday night included the twangy “Stay on the Ride,” the rapturous “No Bad News,” the bluesy “Love Throws a Line” and the rousing “Getting Ready.” She even offered a gospel-tinged love song, “Heavenly Day,” and admitted she’d actually written it to her dog.

But for all her spirit and zest, Griffin is at her best when she’s giving voice to the darker side of day-to-day life. “Trapeze” from the new album is a stunning song about an aging trapeze artist in a run-down circus. “One of these nights the old girl’s going down,” she sang.

In “I Don’t Ever Give Up,” a quintessential Griffin creation, Griffin crafts a portrait of despair: “I’m no fighter but I’m fighting…I’m not clean; I’m not washed up.” But the bleakness is tinged with cautious hope: “Love isn’t here, but it’s somewhere.”

When Griffin sets out to move her audience, she does so with apparent ease. There’s a quality in her voice that wavers effortlessly between pain and joy, so she can rock through her ode to the gay kid in her homeroom class who committed suicide (“Tony”), or she can conjure the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. in the sublime hymn, “Up to the Mountain (MLK Song).” Both impeccably crafted songs brings tears — maybe for different reasons, maybe not.

Patty Griffin may not be one of our best-known singer-songwriters, but she’s undoubtedly one of the best. Those of us who have fallen under her spell have fallen hard. She’s great on record — as the new disc attests — but in person, especially in a green dress and a party hat, she’s everything you hope music to be.

Visit Patty Griffin’s Web site here.

Read our music critic Jim Harrington’s excellent review of the Streisand concert here.

At first, Barbra Streisand was the kooky kid with the voice. Then she was an Academy Award winner and a box-office sensation. By the time she was a mother, feminist, activist and superstar, Streisand was already a legend.

But what does a legend do to remain legendary? In Streisand’s case, you pull away from the limelight. You still crank out albums to meet your recording obligations. You make (or direct) the occasional movie. And you raise money for the Democrats.

And then, if you’re really lucky (and want to work your butt off), you decide to make sure they know you’ve still got it. You go on tour — maybe two or three times because saying goodbye takes a long time — and you blow people’s minds.

That’s what Streisand did Monday night at the HP Pavilion in San Jose. As she nears the end of her farewell tour, her voice is a little ragged, but such an extraordinary instrument can stand a few rough spots and still soar.

Monday’s show was, like all the others before it, very nearly Barbra unplugged — just her and a 54-piece orchestra. No video montages, no fancy sets. There was a guest (the operatic quartet Il Divo), but they were basically back-up boys.

Barbra fans such as myself were in heaven. The only downside was toward the beginning of the show when Streisand came out singing “Starting Here, Starting Now.” I whooped and hollered to make sure Barbra knew I was there (after spending $350 she perhaps should have tossed me one of her earrings). And the older lady sitting in front of me, apparently not at all pleased by my volume, turned around with her pinched little face and actually wagged her finger at me.

But nothing could dim my enthusiasm. This was relaxed Barbra, happy Barbra (her men and women took the House and the Senate last week, and she’s positively aglow). And most importantly from the Theater Dogs point of view, this was show tune Barbra.

Here are the theater songs she performed in San Jose: “Starting Here, Starting Now” (Starting Here, Starting Now Maltby/Shire), “Come Rain or Come Shine” (St. Louis Woman Arlen/Mercer), “The Music of the Night” (The Phantom of the Opera, Lloyd Webber/Hart), “Unusual Way” (Nine Yeston), “Carefully Taught” and “Cockeyed Optimist” (South Pacific, Rodgers/Hammerstein), “Children Will Listen” (Into the Woods, Sondheim), “Somewhere” (West Side Story, Berstein/Sondheim) and a whole heap of songs from Funny Girl (Styne/Merrill): “The Music that Makes Me Dance,” “Don’t Rain on My Parade” and “People” from the Broadway show and “Funny Girl” and “My Man” from the movie.

In the Q&A when she read from notecards submitted by audience members, Streisand was prompted to say, “Shoot the swans? Dese lovelies?” from Funny Girl, and she recalled getting a voice lesson in San Francisco after losing her voice during a gig at the hungry i. She said the voice loss was psychological prompted by someone asking her how she held her notes so long. “I don’t know,” she answered the person. “Because I want to?”

My favorite songs of the evening: “Have I Stayed Too Long at the Fair?,” “Down with Love,” “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?,” “The Woman in the Moon,” “Cockeyed Optimist,” “My Shining Hour” and “Happy Days Are Here Again” (performed with such glee you knew she meant every word).

And yes, the George W. Bush impersonator Steve Bridges showed up and was hilarious. He said last Tuesday had given him a good “Texas thumpin’.” “What’s that?” Streisand asked. “It’s when your butt stays blue for two years. He he he he.” He and Barbra sang a new duet on “Side by Side” with newly re-written lyrics about Madame Speaker, Nancy Pelosi (to whom Streisand dedicated “The Woman in the Moon” along with the 71 women in the House andthe 16 in the Senate).

Streisand recited a long quote by William Saroyan from the preface to his play The Time of Your Life, and it captures beautifully the spirit of the evening (especially considering she cut out the part about killing):

In the time of your life, live…Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding place and let it be free and unashamed…Be inferior of no man, nor of any man be the superior. Remember that every man is a variation of yourself…In the time of your life, live — so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the mystery and sorrow of the word, but shall smile to the infite delight and mystery of it.