KEY POINTS:
Four-and-a-half years into what seems to be a farewell tour, Dionne Warwick came up trumps on the first of her two nights at the Aotea Centre.
With her six-piece band enclosed by the ranks of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, the American singer told us firmly that we were to have a good time.
We were to sing and clap along if we wished and, mid-concert, she even managed what she described as a shameless plug for a new book.
Standing in for the cancelled Burt Bacharach, Warwick's programme inevitably centred on the composers songbook, from the opening Close to you to That's What Friends Are For as a lump-in-the-throat closer.
Warwick is a consummate artist with faultless timing; at 66, her voice is as seductive as ever, especially down in its burnt sugar range.
The Warwick magic was certainly there in the intimate opening of Alfie, sung to Kathy Rubbicco's piano and in the supple subtleties of You'll Never Get To Heaven.
However, neither This Guy/Girl's In Love With You or I Say A Little Prayer benefited from the singer's extensive reworking of melody lines. Prayer also suffered from having its original metre shift laundered.
For all the Bacharach on the programme, one felt the singer's heart was very much in a Brazilian set, songs that she described as magical, mystical and spiritual music.
A Carlos Jobim medley set things off graciously, Aquarela do Brasil upped tempo and energy while the highlight came with a blistering Latin turnaround on Do you know the way to San Jose?
Lights flashed and there were hot solos all around, especially from Renato Pereira on percussion and pianist Rubbicco. The NZSO was in full carnival spirit. The Latin mood lingered when Warwick introduced her band with what was almost an infectious number in its own right.
While I gladly would have exchanged the crowd-pleasing Heartbreaker and I Know I'll Never Love This Way Again for Bacharach's The Windows Of The World, mentioned in the printed programme in connection with Warwick's highly critical stance on Iraq, it would be churlish to have been anything less than charmed.
