Ring In The NEW YEAR With Melissa Manchester At Feinstein’s At Hotel Carmichael!

First show: Friday, Dec. 31

Doors 5:00 p.m., Start 7:30 p.m.

Second show: Friday, Dec. 31

Doors 9:30 p.m., Start 10:45 p.m.

Join us as we ring in the new year with the award-winning Melissa Manchester! Feinstein’s is pleased to host their New Year’s Eve Celebration with this legendary artist with a career that has spanned over three decades.

Manchester’s tremendously successful solo career brought her critical and commercial acclaim. The “Midnight Blue” singer received her first Grammy nomination for Best Pop Female Vocal Performance in 1979 for the Peter Allen/Carole Bayer Sager-penned “Don’t Cry Out Loud,” winning the Grammy in that category four years later for “You Should Hear How She Talks About You.” Manchester has also had her songs recorded by Barbra Streisand, Roberta Flack, Dusty Springfield, Alison Krauss, Kenny Loggins and many others. Two songs she performed, “Through the Eyes of Love” and “The Promise,” were nominated for Oscars in the same year. She has written tunes for several other films, including “The Great Mouse Detective,” “Lady and the Tramp II,” “Dirty Girl” and “Tyler Perry’s For Colored Girls.”

Ticket prices include admission to reserved seating as well as a complimentary champagne toast. Visit feinsteinshc.com for more information!

December 2021

Editor’s Note: This is our second interview with Melissa Manchester this year. We are honored to help welcome her back to Carmel, Indiana! Don’t miss this opportunity to ring in 2022 with this award-winning icon!

Janelle Morrison: You presented for Bette Midler at The Kennedy Center Honors recently. How amazing was that experience?

Melissa Manchester: It was the most stunning experience! It was true American splendor to be among so many spectacularly talented people and to be able to pay tribute to my friend of such a long time—Bette Midler—where the nation says, “Job well done” effectively. It was just incredibly moving. And to have everybody there in such grand spirits was just breathtaking, really.

JM: Since we last spoke, you preformed at The Center for the Performing Arts along with your dear friend Michael Feinstein. What an emotional night! I cried so much that night, and I don’t cry in public. It was so moving and so magical. Thank you for that wonderful night and an unforgettable return to live performances in the Palladium.

Manchester: Thank you so much! I really appreciate that. It was the first time I had performed since the beginning of the pandemic. The audience was so deeply connected, and you could feel it on stage. It was really thrilling. We are living in peculiar times, but we are alive and very productive—there is much to celebrate.

JM: You were officially inducted into the Great American Songbook Hall of Fame in November. What does that mean to you?

Manchester: Being inducted into the [Great American Songbook] Hall of Fame as a songwriter is such a specific and grand honor to be in the company of the late, great Sammy Cahn and Billy Strayhorn. This is a rarified crowd and to be recognized and to be deserving of that was really amazing. To feel like what you’ve done for such a long time gets a pat on the back and a rousing chorus of “Job well done” is not lost on me. And I am deeply humbled and very appreciative.

JM: I’ve listened to the re-envisioned sixth single from your 24th album “RE:VIEW,” “Come in From the Rain”—a classic from your earlier repertoire. I’m having a tough time deciding which [version] is my favorite. The song has touched me at different times in my life. It is a powerful song.

Manchester: The unexpected magic of this particular project—”RE:VIEW”—is that these songs were written and recorded such a long time ago and have grown into this moment. When I first decided to create “RE:VIEW,” I wanted to do so because of the pandemic and wanted to do it very slowly. Rolling out every single very slowly with an accompanying video so that when [the pandemic] is all over, we will see sort of a travel log of what it’s been like during these times.

“Come in From the Rain” was released at this time of year with the holidays and the new year, and at a point in my life that I am filled with a great sense of forgiveness for myself for the follies of youth and for other people who also struggled with their follies. After what we have been through, there is a deep experience of welcoming people back into your life and being back in community with people for which we are so hardwired. This song is much more hopeful in this moment because I’ve lived so much longer and there’s so much more strength and backbone in the performance of the song and in this rendition.

There’s no guessing around anymore. I know who I am, and the openheartedness of this song comes from deep and hard-won wisdom.

JM: Indeed, this has been a time of reflection and re-evaluation of what we stand for and who we are to other people. As we begin a new year, I hope that 2022 is prosperous and positive for our nation and for the world over.

Manchester: One of the things that I experienced during this slog through 2020, among other things, was this unexpected gift to not only look at our society but see it. And to see what is beautiful, what is broken and what’s never been finished—the parts of the promise of our democracy that need to have attention paid to them and no longer [are] kicked down the road. We’re in a deep moment of reckoning that is going to last for a long time. And there are folks who get really cranky at the thought of that, and then there are folks who are very still and say, “We’re ready, and we’re ready to have those hard discussions.” We’re ready to take these deep actions in terms of love being an action.

I hope that 2022 is powerful, prosperous and certainly healthier for all of us. I hope that people can continue to get back to being in community with each other.

JM: This time, we will be seeing you at Feinstein’s at Hotel Carmichael, right next door to the Palladium. It’s a vastly different environment and is an intimate venue in which you can really connect with the energy generated by yourself and the audience. And you’re coming not just any day of the week, but you will be ringing in the new year with us. How lucky are we?

Manchester: I’m thrilled to be part of the new year celebration. First of all, the room is so gorgeous. We are doing two shows, and I’m really excited to get people primed for the countdown. I really dig Carmel! It’s a beautiful and visionary city. Your Mayor Brainard has done a remarkable rethinking of what a city can be, hasn’t he? I tell lots of people about Carmel. I’m thrilled to be coming back there, and I’m thrilled to be in Michael’s room—my dear Michael Feinstein. I’m thrilled to help celebrate and raise high the rooftop for New Year’s Eve and to share all kinds of music and play all kinds of videos to sing along to. I’m really looking forward to it!

Writer:

Janelle Morrison

Photography:

Courtesy of Feinstein's at Hotel Carmichael