During a 2014 private tour of the massive Rainbow Room renovation still underway before its early October opening that year, architect Michael Gabellini famously told guests, “The idea is to burnish history, to polish and move it into the present day, with an eye on the future.” Undertaken in 2010 after years of decline under the Cipriani family's disastrous rule, the project was more than even a dramatic facelift.
Bar Thalia, a narrow, uber-casual bar/café adjacent to the Upper West Side arts hub Symphony Space, has become the musical pied-à-terre of vocalist Marcus Goldhaber. Each first Sunday of the month, the artist presents two loosey-goosey acoustic sets with a guest singer and guitarist. The past Sunday's show featured vocalist Tessa Souter with Tony Romano on guitar.
Jeff Macauley loves Dinah Shore. That's usually the case when a cabaret performer devotes an entire show to a star's body of work. But there's affection and admiration, and then there's all-encompassing passion and adoration that informs the performer's every note, lyric, and anecdote, and thereby imparts that love to us (whether or not we were previously fans). By that standard, MWAH! The Dinah Shore Show, Macauley's 1998 Backstage Bistro Award Winner for 'Outstanding Theme Show' (revived last Saturday night as part of Stephen Hanks' monthly New York Cabaret's Greatest Hits series at the Metropolitan Room--is one of the most successful shows of its kind I've seen.
The Musical Theater Project and Cleveland Jazz Orchestra will co-produce "Curtain Up at The Cotton Club" for two performances on Saturday, January 30 (8pm) and Sunday, January 31 (2pm) at the Hanna Theatre at Playhouse Square.
JSP Records is proud to announce it will release in early 2016 JUDY GARLAND SINGS HAROLD ARLEN, a 2-CD box set devoted to Harold Arlen (1905-1986) tunes Judy Garland (1922-1969) performed in the studio, on screen, on the radio, and on stage between 1938 and 1968. Four tracks are new to CD.
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.
In her recent cabaret show, More Than You Know (November 23 at The Triad's Stage 72), Arlene Wolff continued a comeback that has been 50 years in the making (which started last November when she performed at the Waterwheel Café in Milford, PA). Revisiting her youth and those turbulent political years, Wolff offered up a smorgasbord of delectable “Tales from the City” over a two-hour long concert of some 22 songs, presented in a two-act format with one intermission . . . Relying on an impressive repertoire of standards, Wolff vocally revisited the classics with a smoldering propensity, impeccable phrasing and articulation--never once dropping a lyric.
Chorus pro Musica (CpM), under the direction of Jamie Kirsch, commences its 2015-16 season at 8 p.m. on November 7 at First Church Cambridge with a program, With Strings Attached, that features choral works highlighting the special connection between stringed instruments and the human voice.
Marcus Goldhaber wears his mantle lightly. Emulating such as Chet Baker, Hoagy Carmichael, and Fred Astaire—those artists who most often sounded nonchalant, yet polished-- the vocalist offers pared down (not simplistic) interpretations of American Songbook/jazz numbers with emotional translucence, as well as authoring his own fine contributions to the oeuvre. I dare you to distinguish those from songs originating in the 1940s and 1950s. With Free and Easy: Livin' on Swing Street at 54 Below (July 25), Goldhaber takes us on a personal walking tour of musical influence. Material is varied yet sustains a distinct style. The vocalist is unhurried (even when up-tempo), mindful of lyrics, and elegantly restrained. He seems comfortable on stage and refreshingly sincere.
June is just around the corner. In New York, this means that spring is melting into summer and that New York City's annual celebration and remembrance of the original Stonewall riots is here. While the official NYC Pride website only lists a week's worth of activities late in June, denizens of the city are aware of festivities spanning the whole month. One of the most popular is the annual, star-studded NIGHT OF A THOUSAND JUDYS fundraising concert.
Today we are saluting one of Broadway's best-loved leading ladies in honor of her new cabaret show kicking off this week at 54 Below, the one and only Patti LuPone.
Johanna Allen makes another very welcome trip home to Adelaide to present the marvellous music of Harold Arlen, and her many fans were out in force to see her latest cabaret show,
In the late '70s, Vivian Reed captured a Tony Award nomination and won a Drama Desk Award for her work in the Broadway musical Bubbling Brown Sugar, and although Reed has delivered some critically-acclaimed work in the many years since (a Tony nomination for the 1992 musical The High Rollers Social and Pleasure Club and a star turn in the revue Three Mo' Divas), during the last decade she had gone and stayed away too long, mainly to take care of her ailing mother. Last November, she dipped a toe in the New York nightclub waters, producing a one-night show at 54 Below that was highly praised and offered hints of great things to come. But this past Monday night—the first of what will ultimately be a four-show run of “An Evening With Vivian Reed” (the next three dates are April 14, May 20 and June 19)—this performing powerhouse established her return in earnest. With Reed's still expressive voice tackling musical genres ranging from R & B to Jazz to Great American Songbook standards to Gospel (even a dash of Opera), her electric and passionate show was cabaret/nightclub performing as revival meeting in more ways than one. Reed is not only reviving her singing career, she is inspiring impassioned converts at the same time.
The new song and dance review features an all-star jazz orchestra and a dazzling company saluting the music and styles of Duke Ellington and The Harlem Renaissance.
Celebrity Series of Boston will present What Makes It Great? With Rob Kapilow today, November 3, 2013, at 3pm at NEC's Jordan Hall, 30 Gainsborough Street, Boston. Sponsored by Amy and Joshua Boger. Celebrity Series of Boston has presented What Makes It Great? with Rob Kapilow 33 times since its Boston debut in 1997.
For the first time in over fifty years, Harbinger Records will release 'Ballads for the Age of Science,' the most successful educational recordings of all time, as a six-CD box set. Featuring more than four dozen original songs written by Hy Zaret, co-author of the iconic popular song 'Unchained Melody,' and Lou Singer between 1959 and 1961, the albums introduced scientific concepts and terms using catchy, easy-to-learn lyrics and music to grade school students across America in the early 1960s.
Celebrity Series of Boston will present What Makes It Great? With Rob Kapilow on Sunday, November 3, 2013, at 3pm at NEC's Jordan Hall, 30 Gainsborough Street, Boston. Sponsored by Amy and Joshua Boger. Celebrity Series of Boston has presented What Makes It Great? with Rob Kapilow 33 times since its Boston debut in 1997.?
For the first time in over fifty years, Harbinger Records will release 'Ballads for the Age of Science,' the most successful educational recordings of all time, as a six-CD box set. Featuring more than four dozen original songs written by Hy Zaret, co-author of the iconic popular song 'Unchained Melody,' and Lou Singer between 1959 and 1961, the albums introduced scientific concepts and terms using catchy, easy-to-learn lyrics and music to grade school students across America in the early 1960s.
