"WE GREW up listening to music from this town, so it's wonderful to be here."
With a nod to The Beatles and Merseybeat in general Michael McDonald made his introduction from the Philharmonic stage to rapturous applause from a sell-out audience anticipating something very special.
They got it. St Louis-born McDonald is the former Doobie Brother, masterful blue-eyed singer of the soulful heartbreaker and currently acclaimed re-arranger of the Motown cannon.
Unlike Van Morrison, another carrier of the blue eyed soul flame whose voice however has slightly lost the edge on its range and power, McDonald's remains undiminished with age.
Backing him was a faultless six-piece backing band including Pat Coil (keyboards), Bernie Chiaravalle (guitar) and the wonderfully versatile Yvette Preyer on drums and vocals.
The Four Tops' Reach Out I'll Be There and a striking, slowed-down funked-up version of Smokey's I Second That Emotion were among the visitors from Motor Town, together with the peaks from his time with the Doobies, such as Minute by Minute and What A Fool Believes.
But it's during his own ballads of lost love and his interpretation of others when his perfectly pitched, yearning, voice excels.
So it proved, especially with heart-stopping covers of Stevie Wonder's All in Love Is Fair and Goffin and King's Hey Girl - which he recorded with Ray Charles just before his death - leaving the enchanted house swimming in an ocean of bitter-sweet melancholy.
