In the liner notes for this album, Jay Landers wrote about this concert tour. “Creatively, [Barbra] saw the shows as an opportunity to revisit some of her rarely performed, celebrated back-catalog and a chance to discover new ways of interpreting her well-known standards. She wanted to challenge herself by selecting material she'd never performed live before like ‘Unusual Way’ from the Broadway musical ‘Nine’ (with a sublime arrangement by Peter Matz) or the vocally demanding ‘Starting Here, Starting Now,’” Landers explained.
Live In Concert 2006 is a record of the Streisand's historic 2006 concert tour, sequenced according to the concert set list with individual tracks culled from performances recorded at New York's Madison Square Garden (October 9 and 11); Washington DC's Verizon Center (October 13); and Fort Lauderdale, Florida's Bank Atlantic Center (October 28 and 30).
On the tour, Streisand reinterpreted some of her best-loved standards while revisiting some rarely performed musical treasures from her celebrated back-catalog. Live In Concert 2006 included songs Barbra had rarely, if ever, performed live.
Fifteen of the album's songs had never appeared previously on one of Barbra's live albums with four of those — "Carefully Taught," "Unusual Way," "A Cockeyed Optimist," and "My Shining Hour" — making their appearance on Live In Concert 2006 for the very first time on any Barbra Streisand recording.
Also on Live 2006, Streisand performs duet versions of "Evergreen," "The Music of the Night" and "Somewhere" with the pop-operatic quartet Il Divo, who shared the stage as her special musical guests during the concert tour.
“A COCKEYED OPTIMIST”
Barbra's liner notes explain that “A Cockeyed Optimist” paid tribute to the late Peter Matz:
“My personal thanks to Marilyn Lovell Matz for sharing a very special piece of music with me. Marilyn combined and arranged William Saroyan's foreward to his play The Time of Your Life with Rodgers & Hammerstein's ‘A Cockeyed Optimist’ from South Pacific, orchestrated by her late husband Peter Matz. Peter was a gifted composer and arranger who was so important to my musical career ... and to me.”
Some more background on this: Marilyn Lovell Matz was a performer, too, married to Peter Matz, who arranged many of Streisand's early albums, as well as The Broadway Album in 1985. Peter died in 2002, and at his memorial, Marilyn sang Peter’s arrangement of “A Cockeyed Optimist.”
Marilyn was L.A.'s leading therapist for AIDs patients, all the while fighting her own battle with multiple sclerosis for more than 30 years. In the 1980s and 1990s she and Peter Matz performed their act in living rooms and concert halls to raise money for AIDs.
BONUS TRACKS
Both Target stores and Barnes & Noble offered diffrent “exclusives” for this album.
Barnes & Noble’s discs added the live version of “When The Sun Comes Out” which was also a bonus video track on the concert’s DVD and Blu-ray discs.
Target’s discs had two bonus audio tracks: Live versions of “Stoney End” and “Don’t Rain On My Parade.” This is probably the rarest CD because Target no longer sells it and Columbia hasn't included the tracks on streaming services like Spotify. Also, the audio from “Stoney End” comes from Barbra’s Florida show, which was taped as a TV special. This song appears on that show.
But “Don't Rain On My Parade” is different — it is probably from the Philadelphia show, and Barbra cut it from the tour shortly thereafter; she did not sing it in Florida, so, therefore, it is not on the TV special.
