At Green Music Center, Kevin Spacey sings

When it comes to acting chops, we’ve seen all we need to see from Kevin Spacey.

He was already one of the most gifted and persuasive actors in Hollywood in an early role as gimpy con artist Verbal Kint in “The Usual Suspects,” which landed him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Then there was the turn as suburban burn-out dad in “American Beauty,” leading to a Best Actor Oscar. On stage, from “The Iceman Cometh” to “Richard III,” he’s given riveting performances from New York to London. And lately, with that sly grin as southern senator Frank Underwood, he’s singlehandedly dealt “House of Cards” into its fourth season.

But what about his pipes?

When Spacey swings through the Green Music Center this weekend, he’s not on location for a film shoot. Instead, he’s in concert as lead vocalist backed by a full orchestra - the lone man behind the mike, belting out the Great American Songbook.

Here are the Top 5 things you need to know about Kevin Spacey the singer:

1. One of his first-ever roles in musical theater was as Captain von Trapp, singing “Edelweiss” in “The Sound of Music” his senior year at Chatsworth High School in San Fernando Valley. Several decades later, before presenting the Monte Cristo Award to Christopher Plummer (famous for his role in the film version of “The Sound of Music”), Spacey confessed: “That’s right. I played Captain Von Trapp in my high school production of ‘The Sound of Music,’ co-starring the wonderful Mare Winningham as Maria. This is true.”

2. Most often, he sings like an actor playing the part of a singer, which is not a bad thing when he’s nailing the role of Bobby Darin, as he did in the 2004 film “Beyond the Sea.” Those were his vocals, not some studio cat for hire, that you hear in the film. A genius impersonator (see his takes on Christopher Walken or Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon”), Spacey is basically miming Darin on stage.

3. If you saw the PBS special, “Billy Joel: The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize” last January, then you know Spacey can at least kick off a decent “Piano Man.” He opens with a breezy harmonica, backed by Joel on the piano, and then summons a dive-bar tone for the first verse about the old man “making love to his tonic and gin.” It feels a little like a novelty act, but an intriguing one, before a star-studded cast of Tony Bennett, LeAnn Rimes, Natalie Maines, Boyz II Men and Josh Groban packs the stage.

4. In April, at the Olivier Awards in London, Spacey stole the show with an unannounced run through Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Starting it off alone, backed by only piano, he holds his own with a tender baritone “When you’re weary, feeling small,” as the full orchestra slowly takes shape and gospel backing singers chime in. Once again he whips out his trusty harmonica for a solo before soul singer Beverly Knight joins him for the second-half run. He even reaches for a few notes near the end, but wisely lets Knight close out the song on a high.

5. To get a better idea of what he’ll sing Saturday night at the Green Music Center, take a look back at his benefit performance for the Kevin Spacey Foundation in 2014 in Washington, D.C. He excels as Frank Sinatra, especially in a song like “Luck Be a Lady.” Other standards he often turns to are “Mr. Bojangles,” “You’re Nobody ‘Til Somebody Loves You,” “I’ve Got the World on a String” and “Me And My Shadow.”

As he likes to say in interviews, “Essentially, your voice is an instrument. It’s a muscle and you have to treat it like a muscle and so you have to work it.”

And chances are, if that muscle ever gets tired, he’ll bust out the harmonica.

Bay Area freelancer John Beck writes about entertainment for The Press Democrat. You can reach him at 280-8014 or john@beckmediaproductions.com.