Fans of Andrea Marcovicci are accustomed to hearing the singer perform Gershwin, Kern and Bernstein. Now, Anne Frank’s name can be added to that august list.
Marcovicci returns to the Bay Area to participate in “Voices of Tolerance,” an afternoon summit celebrating tolerance and diversity in memory of Martin Luther King Jr.
Tomorrow’s event, to be held at the Osher Marin Jewish Community Center, will also be host to representatives from Spectrum (a Marin-based gay/lesbian organization), the Japanese American Association Marin chapter and the Marin County Human Rights Commission.
For her part, Marcovicci will read selections from Anne Frank’s diary and will also sing three songs from composer Enid Futterman’s song cycle, “I Am Anne Frank.”
Educated in Catholic schools, Marcovicci said her passion for Frank came as a revelation a little later in life.
“My world was instantly changed by my study of the Holocaust, which I did when I left Catholic school,” she says. “I became overwhelmed and obsessed by it.”
As it turns out, Futterman has been a close friend of Marcovicci’s for many years. The composer’s own reverence for the memory of Anne Frank led to an artistic collaboration.
“Enid and Michael Cohen wrote ‘I Am Anne Frank’ for me when I was in my 20s,” she recalls. “I was too old to play it then, but it has always been a big part of my life.”
In 1996, she debuted “I Am Anne Frank” at New York’s Lincoln Center with members of the American Symphony Orchestra. Marcovicci recorded a CD version of the work, with a portion of the profits helping to further the mission of the Anne Frank Center USA in New York.
At Saturday’s event, which was organized by the JCC and Marin YMCA, Marcovicci will sing a trio of songs from the Anne Frank cycle, accompanied on piano by her musical director Shelley Markham.
She will also read passages from the diary, including the famous entry in which Frank, only days away from transfer to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where she would die, wrote:
“It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”
Marcovicci says she tries to live up to those same ideals and finds herself especially drawn to all things Jewish. “I’ve been a natural match for Jewish causes,” she notes. “The more time you spend in show business, the more Jewish you get, whether you are or not.”
She began her career in the entertainment world as an actress on daytime soap operas, later appearing on Broadway and off-Broadway in a variety of plays and musicals. She has many film and TV credits to her name as well.
But it is as a cabaret singer that Marcovicci has earned her widest acclaim. She has performed around the world and recorded a number of albums, including “I’ll Be Seeing You — Love Songs of World War II,” “Just Kern” and “Marcovicci Sings Movies.”
She has graced the stages of Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center and Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, and she has also performed at the White House.
A perennial performer at the Osher Marin JCC, she will also be singing Saturday and Sunday evenings.
Marcovicci’s upcoming Marin appearance presages the opening of “No More Scapegoats,” a major exhibit set to open next year in Novato, which will include rare Anne Frank memorabilia.
The exhibit is part of the Marin YMCA’s ongoing efforts to address issues of diversity and racism in the North Bay.
Don Carney, director of youth and family services for the Marin YMCA, says he hopes the exhibit will teach an important lesson about the Holocaust and avoiding future human blunder.
“Novato has been dealing with blatant racism, anti-gay incidents and hate crimes,” says Carney. “The state Hate Crimes Task Force has used Novato as a case study, proving it’s not strictly an urban problem. Hate is alive and well in suburbia.”
This, and broader issues, deeply concern Marcovicci as well.
“You only have to pick up a newspaper to be shocked at how short a distance we’ve traveled,” she says. “We need to make ourselves aware of how easily a trigger can flare into a great fire of hatred in any community.”