Frank Sinatra is widely considered one of the greatest American singers of the 20th century, and now the spirit of Ol’ Blue Eyes returns to New York, New York — or, Chautauqua, New York, at least — with a critically acclaimed tribute show presented by Tony DeSare.
DeSare will be performing with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra at 8:15 p.m. Saturday in the Amphitheater under the baton of Principal Pops Conductor Stuart Chafetz.
DeSare is a triple-threat singer/pianist/songwriter making his Amp debut, but he’s no stranger to Chautauqua, or to working with Chafetz. In 2020, DeSare was a featured soloist for the CSO’s annual Independence Day Celebration — only, instead of a live audience, he performed for a camera.
Broadcast on CHQ Assembly during the COVID-19 pandemic, the concert included DeSare on the Sinatra classic “Summer Wind.” Now, for the first time with his own show, DeSare brings “Sinatra and Beyond” to the Amp stage with his own rhythm section. As Chafetz and DeSare have been friends for many years, Chafetz has had the opportunity to witness the “excitement and electricity that comes from his beautiful voice.”
“I’m proud to be a part of this, because the quality is just so good,” Chafetz said. “When you bring a performance of an icon like Frank Sinatra’s music and others, you really do have to have a level of quality that’s just off the charts — and that’s what Tony brings.”
Many of the pieces DeSare will perform Saturday are the classic Nelson Riddle-arranged Sinatra hits, but there are additionally some DeSare originals that Chafetz “likes just as much.”
In a 2020 interview with The Chautauquan Daily, DeSare said that Sinatra, along with Billy Joel, had been a north star of his since he was a teenager — “no doubt about it,” he said. “None at all.”
By the time Sinatra himself was a teenager, he was already singing professionally. He recorded with bandleader Harry James, and after a brief stint with Tommy Dorsey and his band in the early 1940s, Sinatra went solo.
His debut album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra, hit No. 1 on the Billboard chart. Less than 20 years later, he’d received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award — with plenty of lifetime still to go. Over the course of his career, the crooner and Rat Pack ringleader known as “The Voice” won 11 Grammys, sold an estimated 150 million records worldwide and won an Academy Award for his role in the film “From Here to Eternity.”
Not unlike his “north star,” DeSare is a successful multifaceted artist, performing everywhere from jazz clubs to Carnegie Hall to Sinatra’s beloved Las Vegas. DeSare has four top-10 Billboard jazz albums under his belt and has won first place in the USA Songwriting Contest. But before all of that, he was a kid in his school’s music program who had to fill time in between performances of his middle and high school orchestras. He performed the Sinatra hit “Fly Me to the Moon.”
“By the time I finished, the entire audience was on their feet, cheering for me,” he told the Daily in 2020. “I wasn’t used to being the center of attention, so I have never forgotten what that felt like. To this day, I still get that feeling when I perform.”
For Vice President of Performance and Visual Arts Laura Savia, Saturday’s performance is “the perfect concert to kick off a week of ‘Wonder and Awe.’ ” She said there’s something distinctly Chautauquan about him; not only is he a multi-hyphenate, “he is endlessly curious about American musical traditions.”
In the three years Savia has held her position here at Chautauqua, out of the suggestions that Chautauquans give for booking, “nobody has been recommended more times than Tony DeSare.”
On top of that, Chautauquans know that “something special happens when Stu is on stage with an artist he knows very well,” Savia said.
“He is not only one of the most respected pops conductors in America, but he has a unique, deep bond with this audience,” she said. “The nights at the Amphitheater when Stuart is on the podium are particularly exuberant and this will be no exception.”
Considering this is the last concert Chafetz is conducting this summer, Sinatra is a perfect way to close the orchestral pops as a timeless classic.
“As I look back at our pops season — in addition to all the incredible classical performances that Rossen (Milanov, the CSO’s Principal Symphonic Conductor) has brought — I feel how wonderful this summer has been, with regards to a huge variety of popular music,” Chafetz said. “From July 4 to a live film to opera pops to symphonic Genesis to Frank Sinatra, it’s a pinball machine of a variety of classics that people get to experience from all different genres. We captured and covered a lot of ground.”
To miss the opening entertainment for the Chautauqua’s Birthweek would be, as Sinatra once sang, “Somethin’ Stupid.”
“Saturday night is a reminder of how special Chautauqua is because Tony DeSare is somebody who performs in the top 10 symphonies around the country,” Savia said. “And he’s here spending a Saturday night with us. When artists of his caliber come to Chautauqua, I never take it for granted.”
