Liza Minnelli - At Carnegie Hall (1987)

Having set a record by selling out 11 concerts at Carnegie Hall in 1979, Liza Minnelli bettered her own mark when she spent three weeks at the prestigious venue in 1987, and Telarc issued a two-disc version of "the complete concert" later in the year. (A one-disc highlights version followed in 1989.) Though Minnelli was successful on Broadway and in the movies (and even recorded the occasional album), the core of her career was always her stage act, written for her by Fred Ebb and continually updated. By 1987, the 41-year-old singer had committed several versions of her one-woman show to record already, but Liza Minnelli at Carnegie Hall turned out to be nearly definitive. Performing before a full orchestra, she mixed vintage standards with theater songs of her own era including, of course, the songwriting team that penned so many of her signature songs, John Kander and Ebb. And she even found places for such contemporary pop tunes as "You Better Sit Down Kids," "I Can See Clearly Now," and "Somewhere out There." The best part of the show was the extended medley of Kander and Ebb songs that came at the end and ran nearly 29 minutes, including the Cabaret songs "Money, Money," "Mein Herr," "Maybe This Time," and the title song, and concluding inevitably with the theme from the film New York, New York. The result was a concert -- and a recording -- that summed up Minnelli's career brilliantly. Appropriately, it was her first album to reach the charts in 13 years.