Voicing her own style of music

Alex Coolman

“I hate the word diva,” Linda Eder says. “It’s like if you wear a long

dress and you stand on the stage they put the word diva on you. But I

don’t feel like a diva at all.”

Eder must have to defend herself against the “d” word fairly often these

days. In the last 10 years the singer has knocked out audiences in the

Broadway production of the musical “Jekyll & Hyde” and released four solo

albums that have won her comparisons to the likes of Judy Garland and

Barbra Streisand. If she lacks a proper diva’s brassy assertiveness, Eder

has all the vocal credentials necessary for the title.Newport-Mesa

residents will get to turn an ear to her crooning Dec. 11 when she plays the Orange County Performing Arts Center’s Segerstrom Hall. The show

should give audiences a taste of the poppy but powerful voice Eder is

known for.

It’s a voice that the singer has, to a large degree, developed herself

based on the recordings she loved as a child.

Growing up, Eder received a record of American opera star Eileen Farrell

singing arias from a variety of different works. Eder didn’t know very

much about the material that was being performed: “I don’t really know

opera aside from the ones that everyone knows, the pop operas,” she said.

But the voice captured her imagination.

The 10-year-old Eder worked for a long time to emulate Farrell’s vocal

mannerisms. Then she saw “The Wizard of Oz” and everything changed.

Garland was suddenly the model to copy, but for a different reason.

“Garland, I didn’t feel I was trying to emulate [musically],” Eder said.

“What I learned from her more was a performing sensibility.”

The Garland approach to performance is one Eder contrasts with another of

her heroes: Streisand.

“Where Streisand is sort of ‘I’ll shut my eyes and you can watch me,’

Garland was an all-out performer: ‘I’ll give you all I’ve got. I’ll sing

away all night,”’ Eder said.

The latter approach, one that requires her to pour herself into work and

performance, is the one that Eder has adopted in her career.

She not only delivers exuberant work, but she’s also been doing so --

for the last decade, anyway -- at a pace that mere mortals and sub-divas

would almost certainly find overwhelming.

In addition to performing eight shows a week as the prostitute Lucy in

“Jekyll and Hyde,” for example, she also managed to run in the New York

City Marathon.

To promote her Altantic Records release “It’s Time,” Eder raced through

an 11-city tour while visibly pregnant. She won critical praise for the

alluring hump of her velvet-clad belly as much as for her singing.

Eder jokes that her career drive is the product of “either work ethic or

insanity.” More candidly, she admits she finds the instability of the

music business a motivating factor in her all-out performance campaign.

“Everyone kind of says that you never know how long you’ll be a public

darling,” she said. “And there’ll be a point in my life where I won’t

want to do this, because I’m a homebody.”

In Eder’s case, though, hanging around her Westchester homestead hardly

means getting away from the industry: she’s been married since 1998 to

Frank Wildhorn, who composed “Jekyll & Hyde,” “Civil War,” and other

Broadway productions.

Many of the songs that Wildhorn writes, including the material for

“Havana,” the musical he currently has in development, are tailored for

Eder’s distinct voice, she said.

“If you ask Frank, he says he writes all the female characters for all

his shows with me in mind,” Eder said. “He calls me his muse.”

Maybe that’s the appropriate term for this singer, then. Not a diva, a

muse.

* WHAT: Linda Eder

* WHERE: The Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive,

Costa Mesa

* WHEN: 8 p.m. Dec. 11

* HOW MUCH: $28 to $46

* PHONE: (714) 740-7878