Peter Calo News

While Woodstock 1969 will probably forever be known as the ultimate rock n roll festival of all time, NYC cabaret hot spot 54 Below is lining up an impossibly impressive assortment of stars for a one night only Woodstock tribute in August, led by two-time Tony Award-winner Norbert Leo Butz and Broadway/Hollywood notable Raul Esparza.

You probably don't have to feel sorry for a mature, experienced female singer who decides to tackle the gritty music of Tom Waits and calls her show 1978 NYC Underground, but it was still tough not to feel for Billie Roe as she performed this week at the Metropolitan Room. Roe, who in 2011 offered the highly-praised Dangerous Women: Life In Film Noir, admittedly has yearned to present a Waits songbook for 35 years, but just a couple of months before her four-show run which ends tonight at 9:30 pm (her prize for winning the 2012 MetroStar Challenge Competition at the Met Room), rising cabaret star Marissa Mulder staged a Tom Waits-themed show that was close to perfect in every way and earned rave reviews from the New York Times and BroadwayWorld.com.

Harbor Theatre to present an invite-only reading of The Mask of The Jaguar King, a project written by Stuart Warmflash and directed by Bram Lewis, with lighting by Dennis Parichy and original music by Peter Calo. For more details regarding this project please visit www.harbortheatre.org.

Step lively! For four nights in May, Billie Roe, the 2012 MetroStar Talent Challenge winner, takes us back to a New York many of us remember with a mixture of fear and affection. The world premiere of “1978 NYC Underground,” with direction by Lennie Watts, uses the music of Tom Waits to journey back to an urban twilight when artists and eccentrics of all stripes colluded to make art, news, and headlines. Music director Tracy Stark on piano leads a 5-person combo that includes Peter Calo on guitar, Saadi Zain on bass, David Silliman on drums and Roxy Coss on sax.

Well, it took me almost a year and a half and a long car ride deep into New Jersey to do it, but when last Saturday night (March 23) I finally got a chance to see and hear Lauren Fox's Joni Mitchell/Leonard Cohen Tribute Show ('The painter and the poet who mesmerized the world with their songs,' as Fox put it), it was well worth the wait--and the trip. Actually, the show itself was a trip, as Fox not only embodied the look, spirit, and vocal timbre of Mitchell and her songs (if not completely reaching her soaring soprano), she also managed to channel the persona of the intense and mysterious machoness of Cohen simply by donning a fedora and maximizing her deeper register voice. It's not at all a surprise that Fox not only received rave media reviews and the 2012 MAC Award for 'Best Debut' for this show, but that a 750-seat theater like the recently-renovated, Art Deco style Landis in Vineland, NJ, would want to bring this stunning, 16-song cabaret set and Fox's transcendent performance to their stage

Led by Lauren Fox, a lively group of New York cabaret all-stars, staged a rousing and highly entertaining late night benefit show called 'Cabaret Rocks the Rockaways' to raise funds for the people out in the far reaches of Queens who are still suffering from the ravages of last November's Hurricane Sandy.

Voting is now underway for the Inaugural Cabaret Awards and continues until December 31, 2012. Winners will be announced in early January.

2012 was indeed a very good year for the art of Cabaret in New York City. Here, BroadwayWorld.com Cabaret Reviewer and Columnist Stephen Hanks offers up his exclusive 'Best New York Cabaret Performers of the Year' for 2012, plus some surprising honorable mentions. Let the debates begin!

Voting is now underway for the Inaugural Cabaret Awards and continues until December 31, 2012. Winners will be announced in early January.

Voting is now underway for the Inaugural Cabaret Awards and continues until December 31, 2012. Winners will be announced in early January. Check out the live standings below.

Voting is now underway for the Inaugural Cabaret Awards and continues until December 31, 2012. Winners will be announced in early January. Check out the live standings below.

Voting is now underway for the Inaugural Cabaret Awards and continues until December 31, 2012. Winners will be announced in early January. Check out the latest standings below.

After receiving more than 3,000 nominations once BroadwayWorld.com announced it's first-ever New York Cabaret Awards in early October, BWW is now pleased to announce it's final nominations ballot in 20 categories. Now it's time for all you cabaret performers and fans to vote for the best singers, musicians and shows of the year. Voting will continue until December 31 and winners will be announced in early January.

Stephen Hawking and his fellow physicists may not have yet figured out the formula for traveling through the time-space continuum, but apparently the Metropolitan Room discovered the secret. Last Friday night (October 26), I walked through the curtain into the main performance space and entered a time tunnel that took me from the 21st century into the 1960s and '70s. Two lovely, rising young stars of cabaret, Lauren Fox and Jennifer Sheehan (photo left), had obviously hurtled though that same time warp because in two separate shows on the same evening, they performed songs that had been written and recorded 15 to 25 years before they were born. In the process they transported this particular Baby Boomer joyously back to his youth and to the days of cultural upheaval, generation gaps, peace, love, war, and some of the best pop/rock music ever written.

Lauren Fox, whose highly praised Joni Mitchell-Leonard Cohen show was considered one of the most artistically ambitious cabaret debuts in years, continues to explore the music of the '60s and '70s in a new show, "Canyon Folkies," premiering at the Metropolitan Room, 34 West 22nd Street, on Thursday October 11 at 7pm. In a major engagement consisting of four shows through November 2, Fox reunites with music director Jon Weber on piano, Peter Calo on guitar and Ritt Henn on bass.

There may have been 40 cabaret performers strutting their stuff this past week at the 23rd New York Cabaret Convention at the Rose Theater at Lincoln Center, but the true star of the three-night extravaganza (October 17-19) was the late Donald Smith, the cabaret impresario and guru to the genre's luminaries, who died this past March at 79. Sponsored by the Mabel Mercer Foundation, which Smith founded in 1985, this year's Convention featured numerous homages to Smith from the performers, many of whom had their career's supported and advanced with the help of the colorful and beloved cabaret producer and promoter. Early in Wednesday's Gala Opening Night show, the 'first lady of the American keyboard' Barbara Carroll called her friend Donald Smith 'the quintessential New Yorker,' and when Mark Nadler closed night one with George and Ira Gershwin's 'Our Love Is Here to Stay,' he said, 'Everybody who cares about the myths of these songs are in this room tonight.' Well, it was clear that anyone who cared about Donald Smith was at the Rose Theater for at least one of the three shows.

Linda Eder kicked off The Town Hall's (123 West 43rd Street) Eighth Annual Broadway Cabaret Festival on Saturday, October 13th at 8PM, with her new show A New Life. In this special evening, Miss Eder reunited with her Jekyll and Hyde co-stars Robert Cuccioli and Christiane Noll. Taking place over a three consecutive weeks in October, The Broadway Cabaret Festival, will also include Broadway Originals! on Sunday, October 21st at 3pm and The Best of Broadway By The Year on Friday, October 26th at 8PM. The Broadway Cavaret Festival is written and hosted by Scott Siegel for The Town Hall. BroadwayWorld brings you coverage from Eder's concert below!

Lauren Fox, whose highly praised Joni Mitchell-Leonard Cohen show was considered one of the most artistically ambitious cabaret debuts in years, continues to explore the music of the '60s and '70s in a new show, 'Canyon Folkies,' playing at the Metropolitan Room, 34 West 22nd Street. In a major engagement consisting of four shows through November 2, Fox reunites with music director Jon Weber on piano, Peter Calo on guitar and Ritt Henn on bass. 'Canyon Folkies: Over the Hills and Under the Covers' performs Friday October 12 at 7pm; Friday October 26 at 9:30pm, and Friday November 2 at 7pm. Check out photos from the concert below!

Lauren Fox, whose highly praised Joni Mitchell-Leonard Cohen show was considered one of the most artistically ambitious cabaret debuts in years, continues to explore the music of the '60s and '70s in a new show, "Canyon Folkies," premiering at the Metropolitan Room, 34 West 22nd Street, tonight, October 11 at 7pm. In a major engagement consisting of four shows through November 2, Fox reunites with music director Jon Weber on piano, Peter Calo on guitar and Ritt Henn on bass.

Lauren Fox, whose highly praised Joni Mitchell-Leonard Cohen show was considered one of the most artistically ambitious cabaret debuts in years, continues to explore the music of the '60s and '70s in a new show, "Canyon Folkies," premiering at the Metropolitan Room, 34 West 22nd Street, on Thursday October 11 at 7pm. In a major engagement consisting of four shows through November 2, Fox reunites with music director Jon Weber on piano, Peter Calo on guitar and Ritt Henn on bass.