http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/20/arts/music/joyce-breach-performs-standards-at-dont-tell-mama.html 2014-10-19 22:04:18 Joyce Breach Performs Standards at Don’t Tell Mama Joyce Breach, a beloved longtime fixture on New York’s cabaret circuit, is a quintessential keeper of the flame of an intimate nightclub tradition. === Joyce Breach At Don’t Tell Mama last Monday evening, Ms. Breach performed a set of songs mostly from her new album, “Moments Like This,” in which she is accompanied by Mike Renzi on piano and Jay Leonhart on bass. For this kind of show, you can’t do better than that, but Jon Weber, the last-minute substitute for Mr. Renzi, who had a date with Tony Bennett, is a major contender in a crowded field of gifted accompanists. The show paid special tribute to the songwriting of Peggy Lee and Blossom Dearie, performers who in their very different ways were fellow minimalists. Irving Berlin was hailed as Ms. Breach’s favorite composer and “They Say It’s Wonderful,” from “Annie Get Your Gun,” as her favorite song. The world Ms. Breach conjures is awash in romance and nostalgia tinged with ennui. The Victor Young-Peggy Lee ballad “Where Can I Go Without You?” is a sigh of recognition that travel can’t always mend a broken heart. Offered in the same spirit was her rendition of “These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You).” As the details in the sense-memory lyrics of this great song accumulated, the fragrance of gardenia perfume, “candle lights on little corner tables” and “the tinkling piano in the next apartment,” added up. Ms. Breach’s comforting voice fused every element into a happy-sad vision of days gone by and love remembered.