Teri Ralston

Most of us first heard Teri Ralston's rich soprano in 1970 on that landmark Broadway Cast Album of COMPANY (above with Larry Kert & George Coe) as she sang "Bless this day..." which led us into the hilarity of "Getting Married Today". In 1973 she was a Lieder Singer in the original A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC and the same year she revealed a wonderfully gutsy belt at the SONDHEIM TRIBUTE singing "We're Gonna Be Alright" with Laurence Guittard.

Ms. Ralston has enjoyed a long and varied career in theatres around the country since those days and now she teaches at AMDA and appears in cabaret far too infrequently as she reminded us with her opening number at the Metropolitan Room, "Why Don't We Do This More Often?" An evening of revisiting her favourite songs now that she's old enough to understand what they mean, Ms. Ralston played to a packed house with a most enthusiastic contingent of her students cheering her on as she revisited early influences such as Helen Morgan (it was fascinating to hear the lyrics of "Bill" getting huge laughs from the youngsters unfamiliar with the material), Roy Rogers (a medley including "Tumbling Tumbleweeds", "Jingle Jangle Jingle" and "Don't Fence Me In") and Irving Berlin ( a touching reading of  "You Can Have Him" from MISS LIBERTY) . She recreated her first role as 30 year old Olivia in the West Coast Company of YOUR OWN THING (she was actually 20 and singing "The Middle Years") and sang ALL the parts in her COMPANY signature song "Getting Married Today". She introduced another signature song, the glorious "Chanson" from fabled disaster THE BAKER'S WIFE, by telling how Gower Champion was brought in to look at the struggling show out of town and Champion pointed at Teri and told composer Stephen Schwartz,  "That girl needs a song to open the show and tell us what the evening is about." (click audio below)

 The evening concluded with an impassioned "If We Only Have Love" from JACQUES BREL IS ALIVE & WELL in which she appeared at the Village Gate, and an audience singalong of "Happy Trails To You".

Ralston is in magnificent voice and her audience, including Penny Fuller, Joy Franz, Ira Denmark, my date Natalie Mosco, director Barry Kleinbort and the ubiquitous Harvey Evans, showed their 'preciation. I even got an introduction to the lady herself courtesy of new chum Rick Stockwell who took Ms. Ralston's latest headshots including this gorgeous photo above.