At the concert’s opening she promised the casually-attired audience at Marina Embarcadero Park South “a short stroll down memory lane.” But Dionne Warwick’s string-of-pearls medley of Burt Bacharach/Hal David platinum ballads was only a warm-up to her spirited, dance-inflected Brazilian set and her gospel-infused anthems of love universal.

When Warwick sings the lyric “What the world needs now is love, sweet love,” you know she is not encouraging a mere outbreak of puppy love in eighth-grade science class. She is invoking that force-of-the-universe love that she and other members of her family lauded in the Gospelaires,their gospel ensemble that triumphed at Harlem’s Apollo Theatre some 50 years ago.

Time has been kind to Warwick, and at 68 her smooth-as-hot-cocoa contralto floats across the crowd with elegant ease. She glides comfortably across the front of the stage communicating directly to each section of the outdoor audience, safely wrapped in the cocoon of her gentle lyrics. She owns the stage, not with the audacity of a diva (I’ll be kind for a change and not enumerate those at the top of my list), but with the noblesse oblige of a hostess welcoming guests at an elegant sit-down dinner.

Instead of being introduced by one of those puffed-up, off-stage announcements blaring from the sound system, Warwick casually walked stage center whille the orchestra noodled through the intro to “Close to You” and chose a microphone from a stand in front of the grand piano, much like your great aunt would pick out a pair of white gloves at Nordstrom.

For the nostalgia crowd, she then launched into “Walk on By,” “Anyone who Had a Heart,” “You’ll Never Get to Heaven,” and “I’ll Never fall in Love Again.” About this time in the program I realized that Warwick in her prime turned out a staggering number of hit songs that are completely identified with her. She doesn’t have to cover other artists’ repertory—her own closet is stuffed to overflowing.

When Warwick sings “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” unlike, say, a Billie Holiday song, this is not resignation or defeat, nor is it an Earth Kitt urbane “good riddance.” The smile in her voice says, “Oh yes I will, and it will be so much better than the last time.”

The evening, however, was not mere nostalgia. She re-arranged “Say a Little Prayer for Me” as a saucy bossa nova, slicing and dicing those pert phrases into sensuous wisps of melody. She expanded “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” into a mini-concerto, with generous solos for her pianist-director Kathy Rubico and her Brazilian drummer Sao Renato Bresa. Even the San Diego Symphony’s own first violinist Randall Brinton added a jazzy cadeneza. Who would have thought?

Her upbeat, more impassioned Brazilian set inlcuded a medley of Antonio Carlos Jobim songs and Ary Barroso’s “Aquarela do Brasil,” which served as a tribute to her adotpted home country.

Warwick’s predictable finale, but no less enjoyable for that, was “That’s What Friends Are For,” a feel-good anthem that served both as a reminder of her stellar musical collaborations and of her charity work for AIDS-related projects.

The first half of this concert featured the San Diego Symphony under the baton of resident Pops Conductor Matthew Garbutt. Their account of George Gershwin’s “A Porgy and Bess Symphonic Picture” (arranged by Richard Russell Bennett) proved unusually detailed and sympathetic, gracing those familiar songs with lyrical nuance and providing well-tailored flare in the energetic interludes and finale.

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