Michael Feinstein gives good love. The rich-as-chocolate-voiced troubadour not only recently released a lovey-dovey Frank Sinatra covers album, "The Sinatra Project," but he and his partner, Terrence Flannery, married Oct. 17 after 11 years together. They tied the knot at the couple's L.A. estate with performances from Liza Minnelli – who helped launch his career in the mid-'80s – and Barry Manilow (does it get any gayer than that?).
Feinstein, long considered the premier pianist-singer of the Great American Songbook, will perform selections from his latest, which took a meandering path before being released in early September.
"It began as a tribute to Greatest Generation without the hackneyed material," the 52-year-old told The New York Times a couple of months ago. "Then it became songs Sinatra might have sung but never did, then love songs – and, finally, songs he did perform but with different arrangements, so that it wouldn't sound like I was trying to copy him."
Dedicating his life to preserving the works of songwriters Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter and Irving Berlin, Feinstein's 24th album was recorded, according to The Times, in L.A. at Capitol Records' Studio A, where Sinatra created his classic concept albums.
Once a piano-bar performer, Feinstein's gone on to nab four Grammys but hasn't strayed too far from his humble roots. He's still dazzling cabaret crowds, and he's also composed music for two shows: "The Day They Saved Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade," a family musical, and "The Gold Room."
Live, where he's been reported to take audience requests, he's known to swoon others with his ability to unexpectedly crack jokes between tender ballads. At one recent gig, he broke into Irving Berlin's "I Love a Piano" and, according to a review in The Buffalo News, quipped, smiling: "I have a Web site. It's www.michaelbuble.com."
"I have to really recognize that there's a lot of absurdity in the world," he told us in February, "and I think that laughter has been a thing that has sustained me through a great deal of different experiences and challenges. I really like to share the joy of life."
And love, apparently.
An Evening with Michael Feinstein
8 p.m. Nov. 8
Michael A. Guido Theatre, Dearborn
