Seasoned singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright delivered a short-but-sweet performance from his diverse catalog Saturday night at City Winery in the Strip District.
Wainwright is modern-day folk-rock royalty, the son of American singer Loudon Wainwright III and French-Canadian folk singer Kate McGarrigle. Following in the footsteps of his parents, Rufus Wainwright has spent almost three decades composing and recording his own music, notable covers, operas, musical theater projects and even an album of Shakespeare sonnets set to music. He has been nominated for Grammys and Juno Awards (the Grammys’ Canadian equivalent) several times over the years. He’s also recorded several songs specifically for film soundtracks, but more on that later.
In his first of two shows Saturday night, he started at the piano with the soaring “Agnus Dei,” the Christian litigurical chant (in Latin) that opens his 2004 album “Want Two.” At the song’s close, he talked about his ambitious new work, “Dream Requiem,” based on the Latin Requiem Mass and Byron’s apocalyptic poem “Darkness.” The piece premiered last year in Paris with Meryl Streep narrating; in May, it will be performed in Los Angeles with Jane Fonda narrating.
He continued with “Vibrate,” a more contemporary ballad, still at the piano. Describing cellphones and their role in heartbreak, it felt like a Joni Mitchell tune, with plaintive, frank intonations and delicate fingerwork on the piano.
While Wainwright performs regularly, he rarely undertakes tours “with a name,” as he quipped. Yet this tour is more structured and he’s doing “some new stuff.”
He played “Nobody’s Off the Hook,” he said, because the actress Molly Ringwald told him to. She was right to implore him; the song is a little bit bluesy with some serious flair at the piano and a cinematic quality that shows why he’s been so sought-after for film soundtracks and stage shows.
Wainwright switched to guitar for the wry “Gay Messiah,” though he maintained the same dry sincerity in his voice.
He was wearing a T-shirt bearing his well-known lyrics: “Do you really think you go to Hell for having loved?” As a married gay man, Wainwright is outspoken — both in his life and in his music — about gay rights. But that wasn’t the only political topic on his mind on Saturday night.
“You know, I was born in upstate New York, but then I grew up in Canada, in Montreal, so this is pretty intense. I say that very seriously, my family up there … are pretty freaked out about what’s happening, as we all are,” he said.
He followed up that monologue with “So Long, Marianne,” the first of a pair of covers by Canadian music legend Leonard Cohen. The cover, I must admit, was even better than the original, with Wainwright’s raw strumming on the guitar and the full power of his voice behind it.
He followed that with “Cry Myself Awake,” the most vulnerable song of the evening; “Art Teacher,” a dreamy tune back at the piano with a bit of a showtune quality; and “Old Song” and “Early Morning Madness,” which notched up the theatricality and added a conversational, off-kilter quality that drew the audience in.
He talked about how “Liberty Cabbage” was the first song he wrote in his “sound” back in high school, and how it got its name from the term many Americans used for sauerkraut during World War I, as a dig at Germans. The song itself is both sardonic and unguarded, showing the ambivalence that he felt toward the United States even at a young age.
Wainwright ended the pre-encore set with “Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk,” one of his most popular tunes, which he played with nimble fingers on the keys. Returning to the stage, he played the incendiary “Going to a Town,” the 2007 song for which this tour is named and from which the lyric on his shirt was pulled.
He ended on another Leonard Cohen cover, “Hallelujah,” which he recorded for the soundtrack album of “Shrek.” Many listeners may be more familiar with the 1994 Jeff Buckley version, which is a tad more dramatic and quavering; Wainwright lends the song a soft steadiness that packs just as much emotional punch, especially in the last couple of verses, where he made the music spare enough to let the heartbreaking lyrics shine.
After seeing such an intimate performance, it’s almost hard to believe that he could come back for a second show that night. It would’ve been even nicer if it had been longer, but Wainwright gave the packed room a passionate, funny and moving show.