By JACKIE MOE
There is a moment in a Betty Buckley concert when the room gets quiet, the music settles in and something changes.
For Buckley, that is the point.
The Broadway legend is bringing that philosophy—and songs from her new live album, Enough—to La Mirada Theatre on Oct. 18, where she will perform with longtime musical director and pianist Christian Jacob.
“I’ve said this to my band for years, we’re undercover heart surgeons,” she says. “And it’s our job to go in and move the stress, and the havoc, and the frustration, and the concern off of people’s hearts, and help them remember the essence of who they are so they can have some kind of catharsis and feel better after they leave the concert.”
It is the perfect description of an artist whose career has been defined by emotional connection.
Buckley, the Tony Award-winning actress and singer who originated the role of Grizabella in the original Broadway production of Cats, has spent more than five decades onstage, screen and in concert. Now at 79 years old, she is still exploring what a song can reveal, and what it can give back to an audience.
Her latest album, Enough, is perhaps the clearest expression yet of that philosophy.
The album brings together songs that have stayed with Buckley throughout her life, including music from the 1960s and songs by artists such as Bob Dylan, James Taylor and Paul Simon. It also features her interpretation of “Enough,” written by Sara Bareilles—a song Buckley discovered on YouTube and immediately connected with.
She liked the song so much that she reached out to Bareilles, obtained the sheet music and lyrics, and received permission to record and perform it.
For Buckley, the word “enough” carries a double meaning.
It can suggest contentment: the feeling that what we have is sufficient. But it can also express exhaustion: Enough of this.
That second meaning resonates deeply with Buckley in the current moment. She says she feels strongly that she has had “enough of this” when she looks at a world in which decisions can make life increasingly difficult for people who value empathy and compassion.
The song, however, offers another perspective: one centered on peace, acceptance and joy.
That tension between being satisfied with what is and still wanting something better, is at the heart of the album.
And it is also at the heart of Buckley’s approach to performing.
Music as Medicine
On Oct. 18, Buckley brings Enough to La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts, performing with her longtime musical director and pianist, Christian Jacob.
The concert will feature songs from the album alongside Broadway repertoire and newer material Buckley and Jacob have been performing recently.
“I think of myself as a painter,” she says. “And I do, every year I do a series of new paintings.”
Just as a painter might revisit a familiar image with a new perspective, Buckley continues to revisit songs audiences already know, looking for something different inside them.
“I try to bring as fresh an approach to the previous material I’m known for on Broadway, like from Cats and from Sunset Boulevard, and to put it in a fresh setting that helps me stay inspired in the present,” she says.
The same philosophy informs Enough. These aren’t simply songs Buckley chose because they fit neatly into a retrospective of her career. They are songs that crossed her path and moved her.
That instinct has led to an album that feels less like a look backward and more like a snapshot of where Buckley is now.
Buckley describes the performing arts as being “akin to the healing arts.” Some songs are fun and playful, while o others take audiences somewhere darker. She loves taking people into what she calls a “darkly profound space of mystery and essence.”
And sometimes, she says, she sees people leaving the theater in tears.
“That’s the job,” she says. “That’s my calling, my work so to speak.”
Finding New Meaning in “Memory”
That emotional philosophy is especially apparent in Buckley’s new interpretation of “Memory,” the song that has followed her for more than four decades.
When Buckley first played Grizabella in Cats, she was 35. Today, she is 79, and the passage of those 44 years has changed what the song means to her.
“I’m the age that I was supposed to be then as Grizabella,” she says. “I was 35 then. Yeah. Now I’m 79. And so 44 years later, I am who I am.”
She describes Grizabella as her soulmate and one of her “great teachers,” saying she has gained profound knowledge and wisdom from being the instrument of the character’s life.
Her new arrangement of “Memory,” created with guitarist Jordan Peters, allows her to approach the song from that accumulated perspective.
But there is more to Buckley’s connection to “Memory” than Broadway history.
While preparing for the role, she followed homeless women in New York City, experiences that she says helped her understand the humanity and vulnerability at the center of the character.
“I think there’s an essential humanity that we all share,” she says.
That belief has become increasingly central to how Buckley approaches music. And it helps explain why Enough feels particularly timely.
A Lifetime of Preparation
Buckley’s ability to inhabit a song might appear effortless from the audience. Her story suggests otherwise.
She studied with legendary voice teacher Paul Gavert for nearly 20 years. At one point, after struggling with “Memory,” she called him and told him, “It’s not working.”
His solution was unconventional: He threw a pillow on the floor and had her beat it. While she did, something clicked.
“All this stuff kind of lined up,” Buckley recalls. “All this information, and incredible wisdom and vocal technique that he’d been teaching me for 13 years kind of lined up.”
She walked out and began following homeless women, praying and meditating as she searched for the emotional center of the song.
The work ethic behind that breakthrough has remained with her.
Buckley began singing as a child and performing constantly by age 11. Professionally, she was working by 15. But she doesn’t describe her career as the inevitable result of extraordinary natural talent. It was work.
She compares becoming a professional singer to running a marathon; an especially fitting analogy for an artist who has spent decades honing her craft.
“You can’t just go out and run marathons,” she says. “You have to train.” The same, she says, is true for singers.
“You have to polish and represent and care for that gift,” she says.
The Girl Who Knew
In some ways, Buckley says, she always knew where she was headed.
As a child growing up in Fort Worth, Texas, she saw The Pajama Game and witnessed the original Bob Fosse choreography for “Steam Heat.” Something clicked.
“I had this epiphany of what I’d be doing for the rest of my life,” she says.
She didn’t yet have the word “epiphany,” but she understood the feeling.
Later, at 13, she stood in her bedroom overlooking a cattle pasture and imagined what her voice would become and how it would affect people.
Twenty-two years later, at 35, she was sitting in her dressing room at the Winter Garden Theatre listening to the newly recorded Cats cast album.
She remembered the girl in that bedroom.
“I had another vision of that 13-year-old standing and looking out at the plain,” she says. “And I was like, ‘This is it. It took all these years, from age 13 to 35, but I did it.’”
Her mother played an enormous role in helping make that vision possible. A singer and dancer herself, Buckley’s mother encouraged her daughter’s passion for performing, even when Buckley’s father opposed her going into show business.
“She made it all happen,” Buckley says.
Her mother died about a year before the interview, a loss Buckley says has been difficult for her and her brothers.
It is another piece of the story that informs the way Buckley approaches songs now: with the accumulated experiences of a life fully lived.
“As Long As I Can Still Get That Kind of Joy”
Buckley doesn’t know how much longer she will perform. But she knows what will tell her when it is time to stop.
“I will do it as long as I can still get that kind of joy out of it, and that people have that connection with the music,” she says. “If that ever stops happening, then I’ll know it’s time to stop.”
For now, that connection remains very much alive.
Buckley and Jacob recently worked through the set list for the La Mirada performance, which will draw from Enough, along with four Broadway selections and newer material the pair performed at Joe’s Pub in New York earlier this year.
The result will bring together the familiar and the new: songs that have become part of Buckley’s legacy alongside music that continues to take shape as she discovers new meaning in it.
That is what keeps live performance compelling for Buckley. No two concerts are quite the same, because she isn’t the same artist she was the last time she sang these songs.
She says she is looking forward to once again step onto the stage, follow the music somewhere new and invite the audience to come with her.
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BETTY BUCKLEY IN CONCERT WITH CHRISTIAN JACOB
Sunday, Oct. 18, 2026 | 3 p.m.
La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts
14900 La Mirada Blvd., La Mirada
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October 24, 2026 | 3 p.m. and 7 p.m.
The Smith Center Las Vegas, NV
https://thesmithcenter.com/tickets/2627/betty-buckley-and-christian-jacob/
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Buckley’s new album, Enough, is available now.
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