GRAMMY-WINNER Roberta Flack has experienced losing her passport, money and shopping bags, among other things. But none of those mattered as much as a small, delicate suitcase she recently left behind in a New York City yellow cab which, thankfully, she recovered. In it were CDs comprising songs on her work-in-progress album of Beatles covers.

On the phone from her home in Manhattan's the Dakota - the apartment building where former Beatle John Lennon lived before he was shot and killed at its gates in 1980 - the R&B, soul and jazz singer recounts: "It was raining so hard when I got out of the cab at the building where I live.

The doorman put an umbrella over me, and I was like, 'Let me get my... oops', and the cab was gone. "Luckily, I had the presence of mind to keep the receipt and I managed to track the driver down."

Flack, 73, who sings at the Esplanade Concert Hall tonight, adds that she is much more careful now.

Her upcoming tribute album is titled Let It Be Roberta. When the singer - who last performed in Singapore in 1992 - made her professional music debut in the 1970s, the Beatles were at the height of their fame.

Calling the legendary group's songs "symphonic poems", the classically trained Flack points out that she had been neighbours with Lennon and is still friends with his widow, Yoko Ono.

She says: "I have an association with them and their son, Sean. So, musically, (the decision to make a tribute album) all added up."

Probably best known for the quietly devastating ballad, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, and her soulful rendition of folk singer Lori Lieberman's Killing Me Softly With His Song, Flack says it never gets old to have people come up to her to say that they fell in love while listening to her songs.

She says of Killing Me Softly: "Every time I get on stage to sing the song, it's a different experience. I'm so preoccupied with singing with my heart, and with being truthful with my performance. "I may feel ill or be upset with some other musician onstage, but I have to plough through."

She keeps her voice in shape with weekly vocal lessons, and still enjoys the challenge of getting on stage, and "letting it all hang out, bare bones and all".

Roberta Flack performs tonight at the Esplanade Concert Hall. The gig is mostly sold out, but tickets at $68 are still available through Sistic (6348-5555, or www.sistic.com.sg).

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