Alix Cohen - Page 2

Though somewhat familiar with and already an admirer of actor/vocalists Carpathia Jenkins and Alton Fitzgerald White, I was, until tonight, unaware of the apparently prolific musician, songwriter, librettist, and educator Louis Rosen. Rosen's Dream Suite, which occupied the second part of this June 28 show at Birdland, unearths the music of poems by American poet, social activist, novelist, and playwright Langston Hughes (1902 -1967).

Jazz at Lincoln Center's 2016 Popular Song series at the Appel Room ended this year's agenda on June 8 with host Michael Feinstein's appreciation of the interconnection between swing and popular song, a subject about which he's clearly enthusiastic. Each musical era, he suggests, is previewed by a song marking change: “Alexander's Ragtime Band” ushered in ragtime, “Sing, Sing Sing,” prefaced swing, “Rock Around the Clock” heralded rock n' roll. With the able assistance of Musical Director Tedd Firth (also on piano), Firth's Big Band, and special guest vocalists Allyson Briggs, Jeremy Jordan, and Catherine Ross, Feinstein and Co. delivered a lively evening of familiar and eclectic material.

14-year-old Bronwyn Chochinov always loved to draw. As a 4th and 5th grader, she contributed ongoing comic strips in her school's High School newspaper: How to Survive 4th Grade, and How to Survive 5th Grade. She has also, from a very young age, loved musicals. As best as she can remember, Bronwyn was 5 when she was taken to Beauty and the Beast starring Donny Osmond as Gaston. Mother Victoria Brown was a fan and the two waited for an autograph. 'There were all these ladies my mom's age going crazy. They were like trampling me and I started crying. He picked me up and talked to me. I've gone to the stage door ever since.'

When New York cabaret community insiders and frequent club goers heard that Marissa Mulder was planning a Marilyn Monroe-themed show, the consensus was the vocalist's naturally breathy voice paired with a roster of songs from Monroe's films would be a good fit. Sidestepping expectations, Mulder and Director Sondra Lee have instead put together a one-woman theater piece with almost as much monologue (using Monroe's own words) as music. Equally surprising, the impressionistic show (currently in the midst of a four-show run at the Laurie Beechman Theatre after launching in February at the Metropolitan Room) features not Monroe's familiar material, but rather songs that reflect what its creators intuit as her internal life.

Ronny Whyte epitomizes everything gracious, refined, and sophisticated that's become rare in music presented by artists under a certain age and temperament. Even with jazz interpretation, his accessible choices and deceptively casual delivery present songs as their authors intended. When he composes, tacit symbiosis with lyricists creates melody and images that seem to come from a less complicated era. Last Saturday night, Whyte was joined by veteran collaborators--Boots Maleson on bass, David Silliman on drums, and guest guitarist Sean Harkness--for a show that featured mostly eclectic American Songbook standards and originals from his own oeuvre.

Joey Arias, vocalist/songwriter/actor/performance artist/host, has been on the scene here since the 1980s. Visually and vocally distinctive, Arias's signature black bangs and ponytail have been on stages such as Club 57, Astor Theater, HERE, and Abrons Art Center--not to mention playing Mistress of Seduction at Cirque du Soleil's Zumanity in Las Vegas.  To say the physically diminutive Arias is larger than life is a comment on her fully inhabited, unique presence and talent. On May 30 (the third of seven show run through late July), she's aided and abetted in Little Black Book (no idea what the title means) by Musical Director (and superb bass player) Ben Allison and guitarist Brandon Seabrook.

Veteran performers Jim Brochu and Steve Ross have known one another since the 1970s, an era when New York was filled with piano bars, cabaret rooms, and nightclubs. Pause for a deep, wistful sigh. Framing their new show, Two Guys and a Grand (last Wednesday night at the Laurie Beechman Theatre), in the kind of friendly antagonism and winking shtick popular during vaudeville, the two very different performers manage to be both broad and classy.

Last Saturday night at the Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center presented a celebration on what would have been Ray Charles' 85th Birthday. The program was led by Musical Director and trumpeter Kenny Rampton (who once toured with the Ray Charles band), and included 10 longtime members of the icon's orchestra, along with the most recent “Rayettes” (backup singers Renee Georges, Katrina Harper, and Angela Workman). “Ray Charles Robinson, the genius of soul, his music was beyond genre,” Rampton told the audience. “Anything Mr. C. did from country to blues to the National Anthem was all Ray Charles . . .'

In its robust 101st season, National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene is the longest consecutively producing Yiddish theater company in the world. Its mission: To celebrate the Jewish experience through the performing arts and to transmit rich cultural legacy in exciting new ways. The theatre's Gala 2016 this past Monday evening at The Rose Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center honored Artistic Director Zalmen Mlotek--long a leading figure in Yiddish performing arts--and his wife Debra Mlotek (a pediatric occupational therapist), who has been pivotal in creating educational children's programs.

I don't know when Ann Hampton Callaway started this chapter of her life, but she's emphatically in a new one. The artist savors every note, propelled headlong into her songs with uncommon exuberance. Signature authority extends not only to stellar scat but to enacting selected material. Accompanied by The Ted Rosenthal Trio (Ted Rosenthal, piano; Martin Wind, bass; Tim Horner, drums), Callaway shines luminous at Birdland (where I saw her latest show Wednesday night and which continues for two more shows Friday and Saturday night at 8:30 and 11 pm).

Ninety percent of the way through her new 54 Below show, A Visit With Kander and Ebb, Donna McKechnie delivers the unquestioned highlight of this show, “I Walk Away” (The Visit), wherein the character Claire Zachanassian ruefully explains how she accrued her fortune through the deaths of successive husbands. Phrasing is superb, vocal confident, acting strong. Unfortunately, while the show's finale “Yes!” (70, Girls, 70) is appealing for vivacity and notable lack of pretense, nothing else comes close to this satisfying parenthesis.

When Tuesday night the formidable Chita Rivera opens her debut Cafe Carlyle show, An Evening of My Favorite Songs, with "I Won't Dance" (Jerome Kern/Dorothy Fields/Jimmy McHugh), it's like watching a thoroughbred nose the racing gate. There's too little space on the small stage to do much more than shimmy, twirl, and display Bob Fosse-like arm moves; the performer exudes an urge to cut loose. At the ripe age of we-all-aspire-to-that-kind-of-unquenchable-joie-de-vivre, she shoots off sparks.

I hear music, mighty fine music . . . Host Michael Feinstein sings with pristine bass accompaniment, as Musical Director Tedd Firth's Big Band filters in musician by musician. The sweetest sounds I ever heard . . . he continues as a light saxophone joins syncopated rhythm. Then whomp! All 17 players swing. Rarely have I heard sound design so perfectly balanced, appropriately favoring vocals. Feinstein remains smooth and easy riding the wave. 'You may wonder about the role of jazz in popular song . . . ' our host begins at the start of Jazz at Lincoln Center's first of three segments of the Jazz & Popular Song Series in the Appel Room. At a time when popular songs came and went with alacrity, jazz artists meeting for improvisational jam sessions needed pieces they all knew. Thus jazz mined popular music creating an intersection of the two art forms. Aided and abetted by four very different featured guests, Feinstein illuminates by example, not narrative.

I didn't catch Rosemary Loar's original 2006 presentation of 'Quando Swing,' but I can't imagine it performed with more muscular honesty than it was Wednesday night at the Metropolitan Room in the latest monthly installment of Producer Stephen Hanks' 'New York Cabaret's Greatest Hits' series. We've come to expect lucid, intriguing shows from the vocalist, but engagement level on this occasion felt almost cathartic. Energy was full tilt, lyric communication authentic.

Once again, beginning Wednesday evening at 7 pm in Jazz at Lincoln Center's spectacular Appel Room, Michael Feinstein shares his taste, knowledge, and infectious enthusiasm with concerts of diverse music and vocals. This year's concert schedule with The Tedd Firth Big Band and special guests includes The Great Jazz Standards, A Right To Sing the Blues, and Sing Me a Swing Song. In a recent interview with BroadwayWorld.com, Feinstein says he thinks the shows are popular not only because they reflect imagination and variety, but also because “they're so clearly spontaneous at a time when music is often pre-canned.” Each evening different vocalists join our host presenting his or her singular style.

Raising the bar ever higher, Celia Berk (who in the past year has won “Best Debut” Awards from BroadwayWorld and MAC and received a Bistro Award) celebrated the release of her new CD Manhattan Serenade with the first of four shows at The Metropolitan Room on Sunday night (others are April 10, 17, and 24). Her dream band, helmed by MD/arranger/pianist Alex Rybeck, featured Jered Egan on bass, Dan Gross on percussion, and Dan Willis with his invaluable woodwinds.

There are audible sighs of pleasurable recognition from the audience at the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse at Lincoln Center (on March 30) when Liz Callaway's band plays opening bars from "The Story Goes On" (Baby)." Songwriting partners Richard Maltby & David Shire have been "in" Liz Callaway's life since she was a teenager with exposure to her parents' extensive Barbra Streisand collection (the icon sang Maltby/Shire) and a recording of Starting Here, Starting Now. Her first New York cabaret presentation (at The Duplex) opened with "Just Across the River" from the revue. That show lead to an audition for a piece directed by Richard Maltby Jr. which eventually paved the way for Callaway's role in the collaborators' musical Baby. The young actress thought she was helping out writers she admired by letting them hear new material out loud, but, in fact, was auditioning. (This is actually not difficult to believe.) And the rest is history.

Johnny Mercer (1909-1976) wrote the lyrics to more than 1500 songs, including dozens upon dozens for movies and Broadway shows. He received 19 Academy Award nominations, and won four Best Original Song Oscars. Mercer was also a composer, a vocalist and the foresighted founder of Capitol Records. To appreciate The American Songbook, one must be familiar with this multifaceted artist. In a revue presented last Thursday to Sunday at the Studio Theater on West 42nd Street, Accentuate The Positive staged its title song as an evangelical meeting. You've got to ac-cen-tu-ate the positive/E-li-mi-nate the negative/Latch on to the affirmative/Don't mess with Mister In-Between…(Harold Arlen/Johnny Mercer) Stephen Belida played a preacher while around him Lynne Halliday, Tom Hafner, Madison Stratton, Lou Steele, and Carey Van Driest chanted, sung, snapped, clapped, circled, and raised their arms in Hallelujah fashion. An auspicious beginning.

Every time I attend something in jazz pianist Ronny Whyte's estimable weekly series at the welcoming, modern Saint Peter's Church (619 Lexington Avenue at 54th Street), I'm glad I came. The place is airy, peaceful, and sunny with spacious pew and tiered seating. Acoustics are splendid. The audience is respectful. And they have Billy Strayhorn's piano. Yesterday's easy-going hour featured Alex Leonard on piano and vocals (one forgets how fine a vocalist he is), David Kingsnorth on bass, and veteran Al Gafa on guitar.

Veteran cabaret performer Richard Holbrook peppers his show, 'Sings Richard Rodgers With a Lot of Hart' (at the Metropolitan Room this past Monday night) with facts about Rodgers' life and career. It's obvious the performer feels strongly about his subject's work. Unfortunately, the same energy, volume, and mood predominate throughout. Arrangements are highly similar. Holbrook's musical self consciousness overrides lyric content. His show presents spirit and heart, but inadequate direction.