LIZA MINNELLI

CONFESSIONS

"When I was little," says Liza Minnelli, "I would sit under the piano in our home and listen to these wonderful people sing—people like Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Oscar Levant. That’s a side of me I’ll never forget. That’s how I learned."

On her extraordinary new album, Confessions, Minnelli returns to the songs that she has loved her whole life, and delivers the most intimate, revealing recording of her legendary career. A collection of American classics written by the likes of Jerome Kern, Cy Coleman, Irving Berlin, and Sammy Cahn, Confessions features the entertainment icon performing some of her own personal favorite songs in simple, stripped-down arrangements.

One of the world's best-loved performers, Minnelli belongs to an elite group of entertainers who have won an Emmy, Grammy, Tony, and Oscar. Confessions is the follow-up to her wildly acclaimed 2008 return to Broadway, Liza's at the Palace, which won a Tony Award (her fourth) for Best Special Theatrical Event, and was nominated for a Grammy. Perhaps more significant, though, the disc is her first non-cast album studio recording in almost fifteen years.

Though the album will surely stand as a landmark in her celebrated body of work, Minnelli maintains that the origins of Confessions were entirely organic, almost accidental. "Ah the parties!," she says. "People like Tony Bennett—or more surprising, even Janet Jackson—would come by, and we would end up singing around the piano."

Inspired by the intimacy of those incredible evenings, she started recording some of her favorite songs with longtime accompanist, pianist Billy Stritch. And unlike so many of the “Songbook” albums that have come out in recent years, full of over-familiar song selections, Minnelli dug deeper into the catalogues of these great writers, balancing beloved numbers like “All the Way” and “At Last” with such hidden gems as “You Fascinate Me So” and “Moments Like This.”

"I've never done anything like this," says Minnelli. "A lot of these songs were completely new for me—I was aware of them, but had never recorded them. They're just songs I love, beautifully written, stuff I felt passionate about. My friends say, 'this is a side of you that we know, but the public doesn’t. It’s like being in your house!'"

The results are unlike anything Minnelli has done in her legendary career, which is now entering its fifth decade. Perhaps the world’s most complete performer, her roles in such films as Cabaret, The Sterile Cuckoo, and Arthur, and her TV and stage shows, including Liza with a Z and Stepping Out, have long established her as a multi-talented, larger-than-life star.

Which, of course, makes the subtlety of her performances on Confessions all the more surprising. Minnelli describes her singing on the album as “intimate and sexy, with a real jazz feel.” And as she continued to work on the project over time, trying more and more songs, some common threads started to emerge. “These songs all said something about relationships and love,” she says. “They’re about the different sensations that love brings out—sensual, but also with some humor.”

Asked which song or performance on the album surprised her the most, Minnelli points to perhaps the best-known composition on the collection—Harry Warren and Mack Gordon’s “At Last,” which took on new resonance last year as the first dance at President Obama’s inauguration dinner. “I was a little reluctant to sing that one,” she says. “It’s been done so beautifully. But I thought I might as well try, and I think it’s cheerful, hopeful, full of good stuff.”

Still, the singer is reluctant to point to any of the songs as particular favorites or of heightened significance to her. “This is really one of those records where everybody has to pick his own favorites. It’s so personal,” she says.

It’s difficult to imagine an artist taking such a creative leap more than forty-five years after starting her career in 1963, in an Off-Broadway revival of the musical “Best Foot Forward,” for which she received the Theatre World Award. What could still represent a challenge for someone who grew up in the spotlight, and has continually explored new avenues for her work as a singer, dancer, and actress (not to mention philanthropist and teacher)?

The answer was to return to the most basic configuration of all—a voice, a piano, and some magnificent songs. Though Minnelli states that she didn’t start work on Confessions with any sort of plan, she also says that it didn’t take long before she could see where it was heading.

“It was clear from minute we started, and it became more clear as it took shape,” she says. “When we started to put the songs together and look at a running order for the album, we thought, ‘Yeah, this works.’”

Liza Minnelli believes that the key to entertainment is no mystery. Just like that little girl sitting under the piano, an artist needs to retain her perspective as a listener and a fan, and remember what it is that made you love the sound, the look, the feeling in the first place.

“To be a good performer, you have to be a good audience,” she says. “So when you think, ‘that sounds right, I would enjoy that if I heard it,’ that’s when you start to think, it seems like we’re on the right track. And, of course, you never know—but with this one, I really think we are.”