Alix Cohen - Page 6

Wednesday night, Michael Feinstein's estimable series Standard Time once again held forth in Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall, this time celebrating lyricist E.Y. “Yip” Harburg. Feinstein was joined by guest vocalists Catherine Russell, Nancy Anderson and Malcom Gets. The evening was beautifully put together with anecdotes, history, film clips, and Harburg's amusing poetry. Michael Feinstein's erudition weighs in with his meticulous treatment of The American Songbook and his suave and savory role as host.

Just when one thinks Carole J. Bufford has thoroughly plumbed the genre for which she has so much affinity, the artist comes up with an audacious new show whose distinct focus, original format, and unblushing presentation delivers a fresh take. Heart of Gold: A Portrait of the Oldest Profession (this past Saturday night at 54 Below) offers a cavalcade of women who get paid to provide 'pleasure'--madams, streetwalkers, dancehall girls, and kept women from salty to sensuous, weary and bitter to a view from the catbird seat, enmeshed or looking back.

Lauren Stanford (who won the MetroStar Singing Competition at the Metropolitan Room in 2013) has convincingly done herself up to look like the legendary Helen Morgan in her new show, More Than You Know, which she introduced at the Laurie Beechman Theatre in late October and brought to 54 Below this past Friday night. Stanford's presentation is 2/3 singing and 1/3 biography. Research is evident; specific adds color. The use of framed photographs and several conjectured telephone calls is effective (the actress listens). Vocals don't emulate Morgan's controlled vibrato, but Stanford has sufficient musical feel for the period to make mimicry unnecessary. Her uneven contralto can add feeling to a song rather than diminishing it. There are, however, other issues.

Based on the 1994 Albert Finney film, the musical A Man of No Importance played at New York's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, Lincoln Center in 2002, then earned 2003's Outer Circle Critics Award for authors Lynn Ahrens (Lyrics), Stephen Flaherty (music), and Terrance McNally (Book.) This past Sunday (for two performances), 54 Below staged a concert version of A Man of No Importance as part of their popular 54 Below Sings . . . series.

Emerging as a pop diva in the 1970s, Maureen McGovern has been somewhere on the scene for decades. She still has a powerful, well-honed instrument, sufficient to perform confident acapella. However, It's difficult to tell from her new 54 Below show, Sing, My Sisters, Sing! Celebrating Women Singer/Songwriters, whether the artist's range has vastly diminished or arrangements and rhythms, often unsympathetic to original tunes, are so similar as to make an otherwise diverse selection of songs homogeneous.

Abundance, now playing at the Beckett Theatre, was commissioned in 1989 and is based on true life stories of pioneering women . . . Clearly well researched, Abundance manages to feel both intimate and sweeping . . . Director Jenn Thompson makes one feel like a voyeur. When unexpressed, emotions are evident, when manifest, frequently physically, they're visceral. Characters are defined by carriage as well as dialogue and allotted time to think. Outbursts are never too big to be credible. The stage and minimal set are well used.

“Are You Havin' Any Fun?” the formidable Barbara Cook breezily asks in song with the intimacy of an old friend. Having had her first paid (50 cents) singing job at the age of eight, Cook looks back on a lengthy career feeling lucky. It's been weeks since she's sung due to health issues laying her low, but Cook is not, she assures us, by any means down and out. “I like to feel people are on my side and you sure sound like you are.” Throughout her show last night as part of the American Songbook series at Lincoln Center's The Appel Room, the artist performs with honesty, commitment, and the compelling interpretation for which she's well known. She asks that lights be turned up in order to see those with whom she communicates.

Vocalist Joey Arias is not what he appears to the uninitiated. This is not a drag performer executing pastiche, but rather an artist serious about music with the talent to offer a full-blooded show. Lifelong affinity for Billie Holiday first professionally surfaced in 1987's Recording Arias on Holiday and continued with the Off-Broadway run of Strange Fruit, an homage to the icon. Her concert Wednesday night for Lincoln Center's American Songbook series, with evocative musical arrangement by Matt Ray, brings Arias' devotion "all the way from downtown above 14th Street."

At 60-something-years-old, one can accurately describe Tovah Feldshuh as what plucky is when it grows up. Feldshuh's mother Lily died at 103 having lived, one gathers, like the character her daughter played in Pippin: 'Oh, it's time to start livin'/Time to take a little from this world we're given/Time to take time, cause spring will turn to fall/In just no time at all . . .' Later in her 54 Below show Aging Is Optional (which Feldshuh presents again tonight at 7 pm), we all sing the chorus, though no one with more gusto than the artist who delivers its lyric like a battle cry.

When Mark Nadler, singing the iconic Irving Berlin song and Al Jolson standard 'Let Me Sing and I'm Happy,' strolls from the back of 54 Below to his rightful place center stage (accompanied by Nick Russo on banjo), he seems, in all respects, a jaunty, debonair thespian. The song is light, unembellished, infectious. What you're watching in truth is a state of the art ballistic missile unerringly headed for its target. 'My name is Mark and I'm a spotlightaholic.' Tonight Nadler celebrates two 'out of control' spotlightaholics--Danny Kaye and Al Jolson--both of whom put themselves (and kept themselves) in front of audiences every available moment. (The artist designates himself as a 'functional' sufferer of the compulsion.) Memorable anecdotes enlighten and entertain. 'In the spirit of Kaye and Jolson, however, this show is all about ME.' Four decades in, Nadler calls show business his religion. Judging by ensuing narrative, his zealous devotion is, in context, worthy of sainthood.

In its continuing mission to bring culture to people who wouldn't necessarily have access, to illuminate, educate, and entertain, public television stations WNET (New York) and WLIW (Long Island) decided the time was ripe to reacquaint people with the art of cabaret. In February, viewers in the New York metro area were able to view new one-hour cabaret shows featuring singers KT Sullivan and Jennifer Sheehan.

Saturday night, Alexis Cole continued a Valentine tradition at Jazz at Kitano with a different twist on By Request. Patrons were given an extensive list of songs from which to select favorites and blue file cards on which to write one or more choices. These were deposited in a small shopping bag. After the first person pulled out a card, whoever requested the song would draw the next. Many dedicated a number to an accompanying loved one. Cole, with John di Martino on piano and Jon Gordon on sax, spontaneously performed every song as if it had been rehearsed earlier in the day, which reflects just how good they are.

Buster Poindexter (aka David Johansen) doesn't so much play 'at' Cafe Carlyle as 'with' it. Like the bad kid from a black and white cult film, this charismatic artist establishes dominion over the highbrow room, determined to lower its bar as irrevocably as a limbo stick in a roadhouse lounge. A blistering, purposefully overwrought, genre-hopping, two-hour performance on Tuesday's opening night had even jaded waiters and busboys enthralled.

Eric Comstock and Barbara Fasano exude warmth. Both superb musicians, they're polished without ostentation, symbiotic without deferring individual fortes, and infectiously (enviably) appreciative of one another without becoming saccharine. Original arrangements never trade lyrical meaning for novelty. Their recent one-night show at Birdland, Only In New York: A Big Apple Valentine, is a collection of songs in which the charming marrieds express the vicissitudes of love, bracketed by affection for the city. Many are sophisticated, some are unexpected, and all are empathetic.

Judy Kuhn, a multiple nominee for both Tony and Drama Desk Awards, celebrated three generations of songwriting Rodgers in her American Songbook debut at Lincoln Center's Appel Room on February 4: The legendary Richard Rodgers, his daughter Mary Rodgers, and grandson Adam Guettel. In the course of the evening, we moved back and forth from iconic, powerfully melodic songs to more consistently lighthearted and tender fare to contemporary, operetta-like material. It's not difficult to attribute authorship.

This past Thursday night, a group of die-hard music enthusiasts, vocalists, and musicians packed a private home in Chelsea for the latest iteration of Will Friedwald's Clip Joint. The monthly series, which was launched in the summer of 2013 by the Wall Street Journal columnist, night crawler, and music historian who has authored of eight books on music and popular culture, screens highly curated musical performance on film and video with every third session promoted as an “extravaganza,” additionally featuring live performers.

'I was at the Police Reunion Concert at Madison Square Garden in 2008 and the energy was through the roof,' says vocalist/actress/writer Rosemary Loar at the start of her new show, STING-chronicity, at the Metropolitan Room. 'We were 18,000 strong, each of us challenging ownership of this man's music.' Loar feels special rapport with the oeuvre of Sting (Gordon Sumner, who was Police's lead singer and principal songwriter from 1977-1986, before he launched an incredibly successful solo career) as represented by her earlier show and CD, the celebratory Sting, Stang, Stung (see video of the 2010 show, below). 'We're onto the same zeitgeist,' Loar recently revealed in an interview. 'We're both Catholics and some of his writing is about obsession, guilt and penance.'

The extremely personable Cheyenne Jackson landed in Cafe Carlyle last night as if on the moon. A hardscrabble, Ohio childhood and late start in the business explain the artist's astonishment at finding himself in the prestigious nightclub. While Jackson's resume includes leading roles in Broadway musicals such as All Shook Up (2004), Xanadu (2007), Damn Yankees (2008), and Finian's Rainbow (2010), he took the Carlyle stage with only one cabaret appearance under his belt so the genre is as unfamiliar to the vocalist as the venue.

The four-night Mabel Mercer Foundation's annual Cabaret Convention at Lincoln's Center's Rose Hall in late October has become arguably the most important cabaret event of the year. For the most part, it is a star-studded affair featuring celebrated veteran performers and exciting young newcomers. Night four of this year's 25th Convention featured a 'Songs of Irving Berlin' theme hosted by the popular Klea Blackhurst, and starring acclaimed cabaret entertainers such as Anita Gillette, Karen Mason, Sidney Myer, Karen Oberlin, and Stacy Sullivan. Also in the lineup was a relatively unknown vocalist named Celia Berk.