Fascinating Aida singer pays tribute to Barbra Streisand in Horsham

Liza Sings Streisand is at Horsham’s Capitol on Wednesday, May 10 (7.30pm).

“This is going to sound very arrogant, but I don’t mean it that way, but all my life people have said that I really reminded them of Barbra Streisand, which is a bit like saying you look like Michelle Pfeiffer! I used to feel very flattered but I really couldn’t hear it in me at all.

“But I was trained as an opera singer and worked as an opera singer and worked in the theatre and then Fascinating Aida came along and then through all that, through all the experiences you have, I think I have started to reach the point where I am finding my solo voice in the last few years. All of the things that you go through have an impact on that. And one of the things about singing one to one solo cabaret is that you are stripped bare, finding yourself the centre of the piece and having to be really brave to do it. And I think it has taken me nearly 50 years to work out what I can do. As you get older, you go through all life’s experiences, some good, some not so good, and they all come together in who you are. I think every time I sing, I am finding new things about my voice and the things I can do with it.

“Last year I did a show of Hollywood songs, and a lot of the stuff I was singing was Streisand songs because she is so prolific and because she is such an influence on me and on all singers. She is in the woodwork. She is in the cracks, and as I have got more relaxed on my journey as a singer, maybe I am starting to hear a bit more what other people have heard in me.

“I am not doing a biography. I am not saying ‘In 1962 she was doing this’ and then ‘In 1974 she was doing that.’ That doesn’t interest me much. What I am interested in is the extraordinary songs. It was really, really difficult to choose. I thought it would be great. I thought I would just pick the songs and the rest would be history. But there is so much more to it than that. You have got to think about the structure of the show, the shape of the show. You have got to think when it has got to be soft and loud, when it has got to be slow and fast. That’s how you feel your way through it all.

“In the show, I am totally me, but you can hear her influence. As you get older, you can sense what you can do with your voice, and that’s the same with her. She does a lot of the same things. I thought it would be great. I would just steal all the arrangements and sit back, but once you start to work on the material and you have an ego, as we all do, you start to want to do your own thing with it and have your own relationship with the material. I can’t be Barbra Streisand. This is not Stars In Their Eyes. But she is my starting point. She has been an enormous influence.”

Tickets cost £17.50. Call 01403 750220.

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