This week FEINSTEIN'S/54 BELOW, Broadway's Supper Club, presents some of the brightest stars from Broadway, cabaret, jazz and beyond. To purchase tickets or for more information, visitwww.54Below.com/Feinsteins or call (646) 476-3551.
Feinstein's/54 Below, "Broadway's Supper Club", presents JAY ALAN ZIMMERMAN'S NAUGHTY & NICE HOLIDAY SONGBOOK on Thursday, December 17th, 9:30pm.
Eric Yves Garcia has stepped away from the piano. I repeat, stepped away from the piano. The performer strides into the center stage light, his dark eyes twinkling, his jaw defined by just the right amount of stubble. This guy could be a movie star. I was excited. For the Metropolitan Room audience, Garcia's November 5 opening night of his new show Pour Spirits was about to be a down and dirty tell-all of some of New York's bacchanalian carousers as related by the handsome, attentive piano man of Chez Josephine, Bemelmans Bar, and other NYC nightspots. Garcia remained center stage for the better part of the show, allowing his inner storyteller and actor to take the reins, punctuating his alcohol-soaked dispatches from the wrong side of midnight with songs far afield of the traditional American Songbook.
For the third installment of his New York Cabaret's Greatest Hits--a wonderful new monthly series at the Metropolitan Room celebrating award winning and critically acclaimed cabaret shows of the past--Producer Stephen Hanks (and his Cabaret Life Productions) wisely chose Maxine Linehan's What Would Petula Do? A Tribute to Petula Clark. Although this show won no awards, nor received critical acclaim in 2009 (when I first saw it at the Laurie Beechman Theatre), Linehan's revival this past Monday night of one of her first cabaret shows could certainly be considered one the best of this or any year.
Urban Stages (Frances Hill, Founding Artistic Director, Peter Napolitano, Producer/Director of Musical Programming) today announced the line-up for this year's Award-Winning Musical event WINTER RHYTHMS 2015, which will begin Wednesday, December 2 and will feature some of New York's best musical performances through December 13, 2015 at Urban Stages Theatre. WINTER RHYTHMS 2015 marks the seventh year that Urban Stages has brought noted musical artists to its stage during the holiday period. The mission of Winter Rhythms is to bring the talents of known and unknown singers, musicians, lyricists and composers to the attention of the New York theater community while performing at Urban Stages Theater. Winner of the 2015 Ruth Kurtzman Benefit Series MAC Award, WINTER RHYTHMS benefits Urban Stages' acclaimed Outreach Program, which brings more than 200 free "arts in education" presentations to libraries and schools throughout the five boroughs. This year's event features 20 shows and more than 100 artists.
Urban Stages announces the line-up for this year's Award Winning Musical event WINTER RHYTHMS 2015, which will begin Wednesday, December 2and will feature some of New York's best musical performances through December 13, 2015 at Urban Stages Theatre (259 West 30thStreet, just East of 8th Avenue). Tickets are $25 per show and may be purchased by visiting urbanstages.org or by calling (866) 811-4111. For complete schedule information, visit urbanstages.org.
After critically lauded shows in New York, London and Paris, award-winning performer Eric Yves Garcia (Margaret Whiting Award; Bistro Award for Singing Instrumentalist) debuts his new show, 'Pour Spirits', on Thursday, November 5th at The Metropolitan Room.
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.
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.
The Mabel Mercer Foundation returned to The Town Hall last night for the first of 4 different concerts and BroadwayWorld will be there for all. Here are some photos from the opening night. 2015 is the twenty-sixth annual New York Cabaret Convention.
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.
In his first major Manhattan appearance since his heralded debut at 'Broadway's supper club,' 54 Below, in July, acclaimed NYC jazz vocalist-songwriter MARCUS GOLDHABER returned to encore his new show, 'FREE & EASY: LIVIN' ON SWING STREET,' at the Metropolitan Room last night and Broadwayworld was on the scene! Check out photos from the show below!
Observing the last show of the second cycle of her year-long presentation of Songs I Feel Like Singing--four runs of four different shows with four different musical director/accompanists (Mark Janas, Sean Harkness, Ritt Henn, and Steven Ray Watkins)--one might note that 2014 Bistro Award winner Tanya Moberly presents not so much a cabaret act as an intense “recital in song,” featuring music that seemingly examines the emotional psyche of a woman coming to grips with loneliness, alienation, betrayal, addiction, love, and eventual self acceptance.
54 BELOW, Broadway's Supper Club, presents an all-star cast of 54 Below favorites for an evening celebrating the work of American Songbook pioneer, Irving Berlin. His catalog of songs spans the musical rainbow from rag to pop standard to Broadway anthem. Hear outstanding renditions of Irving Berlin's most memorable songs including "Alexander's Ragtime Band", "Always", "There's No Business Like Show Business" and "God Bless America". The evening will be hosted by the incomparable nightlife diva, Molly Pope.
With her new show at the Metropolitan Room that opened last night—Groupies: The Muses Behind the Legends of Rock & Roll--the usually smart and meticulous Lauren Fox (as evidenced by her shows that celebrated the music of Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen and later the Pop/Rock that emerged from Laurel Canyon in the 1960s) has here chosen questionable territory--the celebration of women who serially slept their way through the music business or, as Fox more poetically says, “Made it their life's mission to meet the beautiful boys who made the music that moved them.” Hook-ups are exemplified by often unappealing numbers (too much monotone) and bridged with quotes by groupies whose role as “muses” or sources of creative inspiration seems a stretch.
To paraphrase a Peter Allen song, she could have been a sailor. Instead, she chose to sail the open seas. And now she's singing about it. It all made for a promising theme for the Manhattan cabaret debut of Robyn McCorquodale and her series of four April shows, Diary Of A Piano Girl, at the Laurie Beechman Theatre. Pert, lively and totally likable, she shared her stories fused with original songs about wanderlust in which all roads eventually lead back home. From the opening number to closing with "Somewhere Over The Rainbow," her only familiar entry, she took a circuitous route with visits to numerous ports of call. New to our local cabaret shores, but no stranger to entertaining, she's made her mark in the Big Apple with this outing.
Tribute shows to iconic entertainers celebrating a centennial birthday in 2015 seem to be all the rage this year. But nobody has been celebrated more in cabaret variety shows than Frank Sinatra—and rightly so. Wall Street Journal entertainment columnist Will Friedwald, also a producer and author who wrote the 1997 book Sinatra! The Song Is You—A Singer's Art, this past Saturday presented the biggest (and longest) tribute to “Ol' Blue Eyes” so far this year with Sinatra-Thon at The Cutting Room (co-curated with performer Cary Hoffman), a potpourri of events running from 10 am to an after-midnight jam, and which included varied live entertainment, rare film clips, and panel discussions.
Artists in Partnership (AIP), a non-profit cultural arts organization, will host its 13th Annual Cabaret Festival May 13-17 at the Long Beach Public Library, 111 West Park Avenue, Long Beach, NY. The festival will be a celebration of the cabaret genre honoring the Great American Songbook.
The Broadway at Birdland concert series is proud to announce that On The Town star Elizabeth Stanley will be celebrating the show's creators Betty Comden and Adolph Green in concert in 'Carried Away' on Monday, April 6 at 7pm. Elizabeth's very special guest will be Television/Broadway star Andrew Rannells.
After successful shows at Judy's Chelsea and Don't Tell Mama, Jennifer Roberts is back to celebrate her love for Manhattan with two shows at New York hotspot 'Don't Tell Mama.' Musical Director Tedd Firth will join Jennifer along with bass player Ritt Henn (www.ritthenn.com) on April 7th and 9th.
