Review: Jinkx Monsoon's ORIGINALS SERIES Show Took Carnegie Hall by Storm

Jinkx Monsoon took Carnegie Hall by storm on Friday February 14 at 8 pm. Jinx has a beautiful voice and put together an entertaining concert. She appeared onstage in an elegant black dress, with her orange locks piled high. The show was part of Carnegie Hall’s 2024-25 Originals series. Jinkx has talked about how meaningful it is for her to be able to do a solo show at Carnegie Hall, and her fans showed up for it, packing out the theater. The fan-filled audience loved the back and forth and she had some surprises in store like a theater-wide Wiccan circle cast led by guest Pam Grossman.

Watching her sing, it’s easy to see how she attracted such a devoted following – she has a truly incredible voice. Her eclectic song selection and off-color jokes made for an unforgettable evening. (Early on, Jinkx joked that out of respect for performing at such a venerated establishment, she wouldn’t do her “usually filthy shit,” a promise I’m sure we were all glad she did not keep.)

The set list was diverse, heartfelt and humorous. The sheer range of Jinkx’s musical choices was impressive. We moved, for example, from a sexy, sensual song from Nine (“that was from a musical I’ve never seen,” Jinkx joked) to Tom Lehrer’s hilarious “Masochism Tango” to “Somewhere That’s Green,” a nod to Jinkx’s role in Little Shop of Horrors (the crowd went crazy at the very first chord). She sung that number beautifully, in full old-school NYC accent. From there we moved to a sorrowful and angry “Me and the Minibar” (Dresden Dolls).

Professing that the evening had gotten too sad, Jinkx invited her friend Major Scales out to lighten the mood a little bit. They sang a delightful up-tempo, cheerful cover of Death Cab for Cutie’s “I Will Follow You into the Dark,” camped it up with some clever vaudeville-style dance moves.

Intermission, of course, brought a costume change, with Jinkx changing into a red velvet gown, briefly donning a matching red witch’s hat to highlight the witchy themes of goddesses and female power.

The night had plenty of the kind of bawdy jokes you’d expect from a drag show (in Pam Grossman’s otherwise quite serious spell, she blessed the audience with “plenty of org*sms”), but Jinkx took some moments for gravity, too. Once of the most moving parts of the night was her rendition of “The Lavender Song (Das Lila Lied).” She explained that the song was written in Germany in 1920. Her mournful yet strong delivery of lines like, “Round us all up, send us away / That's what you'd really like to do / But we're too strong, proud, unafraid / In fact we almost pity you” carried layers of meaning: strength, fear, defiance, sorrow.

Jinkx was backed by Music Director Will Van Dyke on piano and a talented full band. During a sultry “Our Lady of the Underground” (Hadestown), she introduced every band member and backup vocalist: Concertmaster Caleb Burhans and JD Hunter on violin, Molly Goldman on viola, Allison Seidner on cello, Steven Lyon on woodwinds, Daniel Urness on trumpet, Rebecca Patterson on trombone, Joshua Shiloh Roberts on drums, Julia Pederson on bass, Meg Toohey on guitar, Chris Kong on Piano, and vocalists Kerri George, Jasmine Richardson, and Marcus Paul James.

Stuffed as the show was with jokes and gimmicks, I thought that Jinkx shined the brightest simply singing, as herself. She ended the night with a delightful, simple, “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” inviting her guests back to the stage for bows. Director BenDeLaCreme came out with a bouquet for Jinkx, who rushed to retrieve her own bouquet for DeLa in a touching moment.

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For more, follow Jinkx Monsoon on Instagram @TheJinkx

Find more upcoming shows at Carnegie Hall on their website (and mark your calendars for April 14, when the 2025-26 Originals series goes on sale).

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