The Manhattan Transfer Calls It a Night With a Final Show at Disney Hall: There’s ‘Grieving,’ but ‘We Think We’re Going Out on Top’
variety.comChris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Introducing the Manhattan Transfer’s final show at Walt Disney Concert Hall, writer Bruce Vilanch emphasized the multi-genre status the vocal ensemble built up and maintained over a 50-year-plus career that, from all indications, really was coming to a close Friday night. “I’m thrilled to be here for the final concert of the greatest pop-rock-jazz-soul-R&B-scat-vocalese-Brazilian group in the history of America,” Vilanch said.
In keeping with that multi-hyphenate spirit, the group’s apparent swan song in downtown Los Angeles’ toniest venue was a happy-sad-ebullient-misty-eyed affair.
Two things were left definitively established as part of the essence of swing: clock pendulums, and the Manhattan Transfer. No revolving doors here.
Two members of the quartet have been with the group since its early ‘70s origins, Alan Paul and Janis Siegel; Cheryl Bentyne, for her part, has been in the ensemble nearly as long as those two, having joined up before the ‘70s came to a close; even new guy Trist Curless has a decade’s worth of tenure.
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