Wistful Reflection and No Regrets: A Life Evoked by Mother and Son

The singer Sandy Stewart is the queen of calm. In a world in which everyone is shouting to be heard, Ms. Stewart — appearing with her son, the world-class jazz pianist Bill Charlap, at the Algonquin Hotel’s Oak Room — is a voice of reflection. As she and Mr. Charlap performed standards on Wednesday, you had the feeling of being in the presence of an empathic sibyl gently reminding you that life goes on.

Because Ms. Stewart rarely raised her voice, minute fluctuations in volume and timbre had the emotional impact of another singer’s sighs and sobs. I don’t mean to imply that Ms. Stewart is a self-pitying crybaby: far from it. The life experience she evokes is water under the bridge, recollected in wistful tranquillity. Every word of the great Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein II ballad “All the Things You Are” was carefully considered in a flowing interpretation whose connective tissue was the singer’s lingering over a word like “are” with a low humming vibrato that nudged the song in the direction of a lullaby.

Her empathic qualities were evident in the electric communication between her and Mr. Charlap, as signals were silently passed between them, Mr. Charlap intently studying Ms. Stewart. If his playing was sparer than it has been in their previous engagements, it was no less sensitive. Mr. Charlap seemed to be holding back, the better to allow Ms. Stewart to weave her benign spell. The arrangements in his three-song solo segment of the show were concise and exquisitely punctuated.

The program drifted from topic to topic: dancing (“I Was Telling Him About You,” “Change Partners”), memory (“Something to Remember You By,” “I Thought About You,” “Solitude”), rain (“Isn’t This a Lovely Day?” “Singin’ in the Rain”) and the cosmos (“Stars,” “When You Wish Upon a Star”).

Everything special about Ms. Stewart was encapsulated in her version of “Solitude,” the bitingly bitter Duke Ellington lament about finding yourself alone without love. Ms. Stewart infused it with such deep understanding that she transformed the song into a quiet, steady declaration of the importance of accepting one’s fate. If you have the inner strength to surrender, she implied, a certain serenity is achievable.