Alix Cohen - Page 6

“If they wrote'm like that today,” Catherine Russell sighs after a particularly saucy number during her show last night at Birdland, “I wouldn't have to go back 90 years.” A Russell show is like actually being there then--primarily from the early 1900s through the 1940s. Which is not to say the artist sacrifices her own, original phrasing for imitation, but rather that feelings evoked by stylish arrangements and spot-on attitude transport us. She offers her audiences vivid authenticity, musical backbone.

Last year during their annual Winter Rhythms Festival, Urban Stages presented a Jim Henson tribute show called The Lovers, The Dreamers, and Jim, and decided to bring it back again this season (presented last night) by "popular demand." Conceived, hosted, and authored by besotted fan, actor/singer Adam B. Shapiro, the well written, if top heavy script, takes us from the origins of Sesame Street, The Muppets, and Fraggle Rock through Henson's fantasy film work. Movie clips and stills refresh sentimental memories as a cavalcade of exceptional songs are performed.

Birdland was abuzz this past Thursday night in celebration of Barbara Fasano's fresh-off-the-press CD, Busy Being Free. Industry types table-hopped among civilians--they know a good thing when they hear it--as anticipation swelled. Gift wrapped in tapestry blue, Fasano was accompanied by three of the six excellent musicians on her recording: Musical Director/Pianist/Arranger John di Martino, with Boris Koslov on bass, and Vince Cherico on drums.

Described as “An Afternoon of Famous Duets,” Saturday's Urban Stages Winter Rhythms presentation (Day Four of the 11-day, 20-show festival) was unexpectedly sweeping in its approach, covering duos that sang pop, folk, jazz, Great American Songbook, and musical theater tunes. With veteran cabaret singer Sue Matsuki serving as producer and host, and Musical Director Gregory Toroian on piano, the show encompassed both the predictable and the surprising and was a genuine pleasure.

Ann Hampton Callaway's new Thanksgiving week show at Feinstein's/54 Below (what has become an annual holiday appearance), Feminine Persuasion, celebrates women songwriters who excel at the craft, one of the few creative sectors where men have not held them back. Covering the waterfront, her selection includes, in part, Peggy Lee, whom she calls “the first singer/songwriter” (perhaps the first highly visible and successful one), Carolyn Lee “a secretary who didn't know how to take dictation,” “optimistic” Dorothy Fields--the first woman to win an Oscar for a song--and baby boomers Carole King and Joni Mitchell, and current pop star, Adele. “These women were/are trailblazers who broke through with their own voices.”

These are timeless: Manners, elegance, wit, sincerity, lively intelligence; the ability to make it feel as if a vocalist inhabits a lyric, and as if she/he sees and is singing to you. Andrea Marcovicci, who brightened the heyday of stylish cabaret, remains undiminished in these qualities. Those who shone when the city was filled with sophisticated boites/clubs, and all fine hotels had cabaret rooms, tend to make the rest of the world look shabbier today.

Attending a Steve Ross show is often akin to time travel. The audience is transported back to eras when urbanity and dash were watchwords, when interpretation meant being as true to the period as the meaning of lyrics. The classy Mr. Ross, known primarily for iconoclastic solo performance, appeared at Birdland Monday night with a zealous 11-piece band helmed by long time confederate Brian Cassier. The joint was jumpin'.

Barb Jungr has us in the first 60 seconds, literally reaching out, locking eyes with her audience as she agitates across the stage at Feinstein's/54 Below. Locomotion seems organic, spontaneous. The arm without the microphone shoots up because it must; fingers snap, hips shift--it's a Frug! I was alone, I took a ride, I didn't know what I would find there . . . we're caught in a story, in the intensity of the artist's complete focus. Suddenly one realizes the number is familiar--it's “Got To Get You Into My Life,” the first of an evening's worth of iconic Beatles songs (in a show called Come Together) on which many of us cut our teeth, part of the very fiber of a collective past.

The first thought one has when powerhouse performers Jarrod Spector and Kelli Barrett unleash their voices is that they should be married. Style, control, and range are unusually balanced for a duet show; the artists feel palpably simpatico. They even look like a “set.” In fact, still flush with romance, Spector and Barrett are coming up on their first anniversary. The married duo performed a clever idea for an evening of song, This is Dedicated: Music's Greatest Marriages,that opened Tuesday night for a four-show run at Feinstein's/54 Below.

The final night of this year's estimable Cabaret Convention, What I Did for Love/Taking a Chance on Love, hosted by Klea Blackhurst, saluted composer/songwriter Vernon Duke in Act I and composer/conductor Marvin Hamlisch during Act II. It was a curious pairing, indeed.

For the third night of this year's Cabaret Convention at Town Hall, the uber-enthusiastic Karen Mason hosted Life Is a Cabaret (Directed by Barry Kleinbort) in celebration of long time collaborators, composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb. Introduced to each other by their mutual music publisher in 1962, the team's first Broadway show was 1965's Flora the Red Menace in which Liza Minnelli made her Broadway debut and with which the three began a long association. Their last together (Kander is alive and hopefully writing), was 2015's The Visit starring Chita Rivera, a production Ebb (who died in 2004) unfortunately didn't live to see. Kander and Ebb's best known musicals are Cabaret and Chicago, both of which seem to run forever on popular appeal, but they wrote many others, a wide selection of which were represented at Thursday night's show.

On the second night of this year's 26th Annual Cabaret Convention, Jeff Harnar and Andrea Marcovicci hosted A Sentimental Journey: World War II Songs, inspired by Marcovicci's memorable Oak Room at The Algonquin show, I'll Be Seeing You--Love Songs of World War II. (The CD is highly recommended.) As always with this pair's Convention contribution, the show was a treat in part because of its singular glamour. Much of our audience was exceptionally familiar with and nostalgic about these songs. A few had to be politely quieted for singing along, more than a few took each other's hands. It seems I've heard that song before . . . the co-hosts begin, warming the room.

In October 1989, four years after he founded The Mable Mercer Foundation, cabaret publicist and promoter Donald Smith launched the first Cabaret Convention at New York's Town Hall. The now four-day event eventually moved to Lincoln Center's Rose Hall, but due to renovations this year at the more uptown revue, this year's 26th Annual Convention was back at its old West 43rd Street stomping grounds. Since Donald Smith died in March 2012, the Mercer Foundation's Artistic Director and de-facto Convention Producer has been cabaret star KT Sullivan, and for Monday night's opening show she greeted the audience, in measured tempo, with the infectious enthusiasm of Cole Porter (“Another Opening, Another Show”) and Irving Berlin (“There's No Business Like Show Business”). Sullivan provided an effective, entertaining onramp to an evening that featured experienced American and European artists from cabaret and theater and relative cabaret newbies who've recently made a mark on the scene.

Monday night was the third performance of a four-show Don't Tell Mama run of Watts' new show Shameless (the next one is on 10/19), directed by Richard Sabellico, who hired Watts for his first theater role after seeing him perform in cabaret. How, I wondered, would Lennie Watts follow his ballsy, 2013 MAC award-winning show, Bloody Bloody Lennie Watts!? Apparently by offering another rambunctious, personal evening, this one straddling the worlds of cabaret and theater. Self-described as "the most shameless, self aggrandizing show cabaret has ever seen" (a moot point) and "an extended audition" (not moot), the piece is custom tailored and beautifully put together, but ultimately achieves mixed results. 

Writer/vocalist Amanda McBroom is something of a wonder. The artist manages to be both lyrical and plain spoken, urbane and universal, polished and genuine, vulnerable and gutsy. Her sharply etched songs illuminate our hearts and minds like artful x-ray. Performance is intimate. McBroom's current show at Feinstein's/54 Below, Up Close and Personal, treats us to material exhumed in an attempt to apply feng shui to her music studio; some rarely heard, a few with the ink barely dry, and a familiar anthem.

Ninety percent of the way into her ebullient show last night at Birdland, So, As I Was Saying, Anita Gillette quotes a 1977 review of her performance in Neil Simon's Chapter Two that stated the warmth she exudes could melt glaciers. (The artist wasn't bragging, but was referring to her then difficulty in finding any glaciers, i.e., men to melt.) The description applies today. A packed audience comprised both of devoted civilian fans and theatrical luminaries cheered on the latest iteration of Gillette's dramatized life. Once again directed by Barry Kleinbort with musically directed by Paul Greenwood (who also appealingly sings duets), with Ritt Henn on bass and John Redsecker on drums, the show is as sincere and bubbly as the lady herself.

Sunday night, Mark Walter topped off a year of Herculean accomplishment in preserving his father's legacy with a concert at the Cutting Room that went off like fireworks. Somewhere, composer /lyricist/arranger/pianist Cy Walter (right in Lloyd Diaz photo), was beaming. In 2015, Mark completed his father's discography filed with The Library of Congress, created a spanking new website, established The Cy Walter Foundation, and put out a two CD package of pre-1950's music with Harbinger Records. The Sunday concert, with expert Musical Direction by the inimitable Tedd Firth, was an opportunity not only to salute a multifaceted talent, but also for many, including Mark (photo below left), to hear songs that haven't been performed for 60 or 70 years.

Actor/vocalist Kristoffer Lowe has recently racked up an impressive array of awards, including the Metropolitan Room's 2014 MetroStar, the 2015 Bistro Award for Special Achievement, and the 2015 Male Debut MAC Award for his 2014 show, Waiting For the Light to Shine. Even after such kudos, however, he's been flying somewhat under the radar. His new show, You're Getting to Be a Habit With Me, which opened at the Metropolitan Room Tuesday night (a four-show run was his reward for winning the MetroStar), spotlighted the songs of composer Harry Warren, who was often called "the invisible man." With his stellar performance, Lowe should by all rights achieve his own well-deserved notoriety. The beautifully put together show displays versatile interpretive gifts, emotional translucence, and well-calibrated vocals.

What qualities define a leading man? Charisma, soul-searching masculinity, and a deep, lustrous voice--once upon a time, we had entertainers who possessed them all. With his Cafe Carlyle debut show that opened last night, Plays With Music--following his Tony-Award winning Broadway performances, 12 years on the road in concert, a couple of recent, all too brief New York theatrical turns, and television work--Brian Stokes Mitchell proves that few such leading men exist. Soon it may be like finding unicorns.

The collaboration between Ann Hampton Callaway and lyricist William Schermerhorn on the new holiday season CD called The Hope of Christmas is, alas, unsuccessful. Though Schermerhorn's lyrics can be pleasing, some worthy of considerable play, the over-produced collection burdens them with music that evokes not a moment of holiday feeling. There's swing, mute-horn jazz, samba, and a bit of New Orleans. Melodies are neither light, nor spiritual or celebratory.