Ann Hampton Callaway

Ann Hampton Callaway plays the Bank of America Theatre at Eisemann Center on Sunday, November 1, at 2 PM. The show is titled The Best of Ann Hampton Callaway, and it's a matinee, so it's one of those Sunday afternoon things that doesn't eat into your whole day.

If you're not familiar with her, Callaway is a Tony-nominated singer-songwriter and a champion of the Great American Songbook. She wears a lot of hats—singer, pianist, composer, lyricist, arranger, actress, educator, TV host, and producer—and most of them come into play when she's on stage. She's probably best known for her Tony-nominated performance in the Broadway musical Swing! and for writing and singing the theme song to The Nanny.

Her career has been built around the songbooks of the singers she admires. She's done The Streisand Songbook, Ann Hampton Callaway Sings the '70s, The Linda Ronstadt Songbook, To Ella with Love, From Sassy to Divine: The Sarah Vaughan Project, and Finding Beauty: Inspired Classics and Originals. This particular show, The Best of Ann Hampton Callaway, pulls from that range. You'll hear her as a singer and a pianist, and the set draws from the Great American Songbook she's spent so much of her career championing.

There are a couple of critics' takes that give you a sense of what to expect. Christopher Loudon of Jazz Times called her "the superbly intelligent, singularly creative pop-jazz stylist who can stand shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Streisand, Ronstadt, Shirley Horn and Dianne Reeves," and Stephen Holden of the New York Times wrote that "for sheer vocal beauty, no contemporary singer matches Ms. Callaway."

It's a Sunday matinee at the Bank of America Theatre at Eisemann Center in Richardson, starting at 2 PM on November 1.