Feinstein does double duty on New Year’s Eve

Talk about deja vu.

Michael Feinstein should have quite a case of it Wednesday night, as the old year gives way to the new.

Across America, PBS audiences will see him headlining the already-recorded “Michael Feinstein’s New Year’s Eve” from New York’s newly restored Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center. (In Las Vegas, the hourlong show airs at 10 p.m. Wednesday on KLAS-TV, Channel 8, with a 3 a.m. repeat New Year’s Day.)

But Las Vegas audiences also have the chance to catch “Michael Feinstein’s New Year’s Eve” — complete with a live-and-in-person Feinstein — at The Smith Center’s Reynolds Hall.

The second New Year’s Eve concert The Smith Center has presented (Kristin Chenoweth headlined last year’s inaugural show), Feinstein’s begins at 7:30 p.m.

That’s early enough for concertgoers to make it home before midnight, where they can catch the countdown — or even Feinstein’s own PBS special — on TV.

“The thing that’s odd,” Feinstein says, is that “a lot of people feel an obligation to go out and do something on New Year’s Eve,” which means “the pressure is on” audiences to have fun.

For Feinstein — dubbed “The Ambassador of the Great American Songbook,” thanks to his affinity for classic pop tunes — performing on New Year’s Eve is business as usual.

“I prefer to perform,” he says during a telephone review. “It gives me something to do that, hopefully, people find fulfilling.”

Good thing, too, because “I believe I’ve worked every New Year’s Eve since I was probably 18,” he adds.

That’s 40 years of New Year’s Eve shows for the 58-year-old Feinstein, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be celebrating while he’s onstage.

For one thing, he’ll have company: Broadway’s Laura Osnes, who performed at The Smith Center’s opening-night gala in March 2012, and “American Idol’s” Jessica Sanchez.

Sanchez may be 18, “and she loves contemporary music, but she also sings standards very well,” Feinstein says.

As for Osnes, she’s performed with Feinstein at several 2014 concerts, starting with one on Valentine’s Day.

“He’s been very loyal to me this year,” Osnes says in a separate telephone interview.

There’s a simple explanation: “She’s just a doll,” Feinstein says of Osnes.

In addition to their mutual admiration, both performers share an affection for Reynolds Hall.

“I love performing at The Smith Center — it’s one of the premiere halls in the U.S., if not the world,” says Feinstein, who brought his “Sinatra Project” to Reynolds Hall shortly after it opened in 2012, then returned last November with “The Gershwins and Me.”

As for Osnes, “I’m thrilled to be back,” she says. “I was blown away by the space.”

The Smith Center’s Vegas setting also adds to the celebratory vibe, Feinstein adds.

“There’s a special kind of magic,” he says, “to be in Las Vegas on New Year’s Eve, because of its show business history.”

That history will be represented onstage by members of the 17-piece band accompanying the singers.

Except for Feinstein’s regular conductor and drummer, they’re all local musicians “who’ve collectively worked with every great entertainer” who’s played Las Vegas, “from Sinatra to Lady Gaga,” he notes. “It’ll be fun to have that mix.”

It’ll be appropriate, too, considering that Feinstein will perform a medley of signature Frank Sinatra tunes during the show.

Feinstein describes the Sinatra segment as “a 10- or 12-minute medley of his war horses — his bread-and-butter tunes,” from “The Way You Look Tonight” to “Fly Me to the Moon.” (But, he cautions, not “A Very Good Year,” despite the New Year’s Eve setting.)

Naturally, Feinstein also will perform some Gershwin tunes — an inevitability for the author of “The Gershwins and Me,” who spent six years as lyricist Ira Gershwin’s assistant. (That post gave him access to unpublished Gershwin material — and Ira’s memories of his composer brother George, who was 38 when he died of a brain tumor in 1937.)

Also on tap: tunes from such Gershwin contemporaries as Cole Porter and Jerome Kern, plus later Broadway hits, including a swinging version of that “Bye Bye Birdie” favorite “A Lot of Livin’ to Do.”

Overall, they’ll add up to “a very balanced show” featuring both “swing and sentimental” numbers, Feinstein says.

Osnes already knows what she’ll be singing with Feinstein: “The Music Man’s” romantic “ ’Til There Was You.”

She and Feinstein first sang the song to Shirley Jones (star of the 1962 “Music Man” movie) during an Indianapolis concert.

“She was wonderful,” Osnes says. “She could not have been sweeter.”

Osnes says she’s “most at home in a costume, in character, telling a story” — as she’s done, to Tony-nominated effect, as “Cinderella” and “Bonnie and Clyde’s” notorious Bonnie Parker.

But, as Osnes acknowledges, she’s “gotten more comfortable doing the concert thing.”

In a concert setting, “people want to see you as you,” she says. “It’s more about being personable or relatable — it’s more about including the audience and paying homage to a wonderful song.”

And it’s those wonderful songs that have kept Feinstein working every New Year’s Eve for the past four decades.

Some of them may be almost a century old, but “these songs are not old,” he says. “They’re timeless.”

What keeps them that way: their “emotional resonance,” Feinstein adds. “They’re not nostalgia, because romance and humor and wit are still desired.”

Especially on New Year’s Eve.

Contact reporter Carol Cling at ccling@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272. Follow @CarolSCling on Twitter.