Mike Renzi - Move To New York

Move To New York

Once there, he found a job playing piano at the Carnegie Tavern, a bar-restaurant that featured jazz. For the rest of the ‘70s Renzi commuted between New York and the New England area. He continued his work with Hamlin on her show Sunday Open House, while accompanying Syms at the Copley Plaza Hotel's Merry-Go-Round Bar and other clubs. In 1979 he played on the soundtrack of the Woody Allen film Manhattan; he also made his Carnegie Hall debut when he accompanied singer Jackie Cain (of the pop-jazz duo Jackie & Roy) in a Kool Jazz Festival gala concert in tribute to Hoagy Carmichael. Renzi was hired by Mel Tormé, whom he accompanied at a Carnegie Hall concert and in an engagement at Marty's, a New York supper club. The Marty's shows yielded a double LP, Mel Tormé and Friends: Recorded at Marty's, New York. In 1981, he became pianist in the orchestra that accompanied Lena Horne in her one-woman Broadway concert, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music. Renzi would accompany Horne off and on until her last public appearance in 2000.

His work with Tormé and Horne helped cement his reputation as "a constantly in-demand accompanist for discriminating singers," as John S. Wilson of the New York Times called him. During The Lady and Her Music, Renzi began a collaboration with Maureen McGovern; he also continued his work with Sylvia Syms, who hired him as musical director for This Time the Ladies, a tribute to female songwriters and singers, presented in the 1982 Kool Jazz Festival. Renzi returned to Broadway in 1983 as the pianist and conductor of Peg, Peggy Lee's one-woman autobiographical show, which closed within a week. Renzi continued to work with Lee, appearing with her in Japan, on a televised 1984 concert in Atlantic City (The Quintessential Peggy Lee), at the Valley Forge Music Fair, and in five engagements at The Ballroom, a New York City cabaret. Their partnership yielded three albums, and lasted until June 23, 1995, when Lee made her penultimate concert appearance, at Carnegie Hall. When a still-obscure Diana Krall heard Renzi's recording with Lee of the song "Remind Me," she called him and asked if he would coach her; over a period of several months he instructed her on harmony.

All through the ‘80s and ‘90s, Renzi accompanied and conducted for a staggering array of singers; frequently he teamed with bassist Jay Leonhart and drummer Grady Tate. He served as musical director for the actress and cabaret singer Dixie Carter in six of her engagements at New York's Café Carlyle; Renzi also accompanied Carter in her segment of In Performance at the White House: Cabaret, telecast in 1994 on PBS. He performed on several other occasions at the White House, including a performance of Carter's cabaret act for the Clintons and another by Peggy Lee in the presence of President François Mitterrand of France.

Renzi rejoined Mel Tormé in 1995 and continued working with him until the singer's last recording session, for the Concord Jazz label in 1996. (Tormé suffered a stroke before that album project, a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald, was completed; his final tracks with Renzi remain unissued.) Renzi has served as musical director for several gala tribute shows at Carnegie Hall, including salutes to Frank Sinatra (1995), Ella Fitzgerald (1996), Marilyn and Alan Bergman (1997), Nat King Cole (1997), Alan Jay Lerner (2000), and Peggy Lee (2003). He performed the same role in an 80th-birthday tribute to Lena Horne at New York's Avery Fisher Hall (1997).