Remy Block

Tammy Faye (nee Tammy Lang) is a luminary on the downtown NYC performance art scene. Long before I met her, I'd heard her name spoken with reverence by many artists and musicians I met when I first came to the city in 1999. Recently I saw the performer in her current show, HOLY WAR 2016: THE NEW REGIME at Pangea, in which she returns to her well-known original character Tammy Faye Starlite, a twisted conflation of Tammy Faye Bakker, Tammy Wynette, and then some. Tammy Faye Starlite brings a perverse, amoral, politically adjacent evening of song and signature improvised unhinged patter, which arises out of such an 'unacceptable' yet earnest point of view that the minds of the audience members are set free to wander in a vast desert of uncertainty, outrageousness, and catharsis of an unknown nature. It was an exhilarating and delightfully uncomfortably confounding place to be. I wanted to talk with this extraordinary performer to learn about her particular vision and creative process. Seeking to reconcile the performer Tammy Faye with the woman Tammy, I discovered a humble, down-to-earth, curious woman immersed in an ongoing critical examination of our culture---both pop and high---as well as the media and the political landscape we are mucking around in these days. Tammy also comes across as a serious, ambitious artist, pushing to present her work and be a part of the cultural conversation. We met at a cozy macaron shop in Chelsea on the day of the train crash in Hoboken. Tammy, coming from her home in Hoboken, was able to take an alternate route via bus into the city and keep our appointment, a decidedly un-diva-like move, which I found endearingly respectful. She and I spent over an hour talking about her work over the years, this shit show of an election, and the underlying question about the place of femininity and women in our culture at present.

Alt-cabaret star Lady Rizo (aka Amelia Zirin-Brown) made her way to the stage to join her multi-instrumental accompanist, Yair Evnine. Threading regally through the audience, she held a translucent umbrella over her head, singing (my favorite Prince song) 'The Beautiful Ones' to Evnine's cello in a beautifully powerful, dusky-toned voice. Her terrific new show, Multiplied (continuing at Joe's Pub on July 25 and 26) is a meditation on modern motherhood, specifically what it means for an artist accustomed to the nomadic freedom of a life on tour to settle into life as a new parent.

We are lucky in New York City. The talent here is unbelievable. Sometimes you settle in for an intimate evening at a little local club and you get your socks blown off. On Friday the 13th (of May, to be exact), I had such an experience at the latest monthly installment of Stephen Hanks' Metropolitan Room series (Associate Producer, Fr. Jeffrey Hamblin, MD), New York Cabaret's Greatest Hits. The featured performers were Vocalist Laurie Krauz and her Musical Director Daryl Kojak celebrating their 25-year musical collaboration “It's a 'Greatest Hits' show within a Greatest Hits series!” Hanks extolled before introducing his stars for the evening.

Raquel Cion's critically acclaimed cabaret show Me and Mr Jones: My Intimate Relationship with David Bowie, has it's final performance of the current run at The Slipper Room on Sunday (May 15) at 8 pm. Cion has been working throughout NYC as an actor, director, and singer for the past 20 years, and has won accolades for her evocative performances. Since she was a teenager, Cion has had a deep, abiding, reverential love for the musician David Bowie, which she incandescently brings to light in this show, as much a one-woman Off-Broadway presentation with a band as a cabaret show. I recently met with Cion at the Chocolate Room in Brooklyn, and true to form, Cion ordered a vanilla milkshake, laughing at her tendency to swim against the current. We discussed her creative and emotional process for initially creating the Bowie show, and then changing the show on the fly after her beloved Bowie died this past January at 69.

In her latest intimate and in-depth conversation with a New York cabaret star, BWW reviewer/writer Remy Block learns more about veteran singer/performer Meg Flather, who has just won a 2016 MAC Award for Best Original Song and is currently performing a critically acclaimed show PORTRAITS at Don't Tell Mama.

"I'm a black woman in America; breathing is political," stated Natalie Douglas, wryly, early in her March 21 concert at Birdland to celebrate the release of her excellent new recording Human Heart. I felt myself inwardly fist pump-yes! Douglas dared to acknowledge the contemporary political circus-which I, for one, am completely obsessed with-on the cabaret stage! Okay, I can relax-I will make it through this show without listening to a political podcast or reading a David Brooks New York Times opinion column after all. Phew! I have not entered a purely escapist fantasyland, but surrendered to the capable musical ensemble on stage. Douglas wore a long white gown (chosen out of the pile when her husband made an approvingly bawdy comment as she tried it on for him) and her band-all six of whom appear on the record-wore all black. The appearance was a study in contrast, but the group, was most assuredly a cohesive instrument.

In this last installment of Remy Block's three-part interview series with Carol Lipnik, BWW's 2015 New York Cabaret Award-winner for Best Alt-Cabaret/Musical Comedy Performance, Carol and Remy explore the origins of Lipnik's art and her unique perspective, and how she became a “Heart Warrior” with the ability to intimately and emotionally connect with her audience.

In Part Two of Remy Block's interview with Carol Lipnik, BWW's 2015 New York Cabaret Award-winner for Best Alt-Cabaret/Musical Comedy Performance, they continue talking in-depth about Lipnik's creative process and artistry, as she finds herself cresting a wave of success, surfing her moment as she emerges, fully formed, into the New York City cultural conversation. This installment explores her important and revelatory artistic relationships-- with club owners, musical collaborators, and with her audience. Lipnik is currently in the middle of a residency at Joe's Pub, where you can catch her the next two Thursday nights at 7 pm with musicians Matt Kanelos on piano, and Kyle Sanna on multiple instruments, including guitar and lap synthesizer.

In the first of this three-part series, Carol Lipnik, the BWW 2015 New York Cabaret Winner for Best Alt-Cabaret Show, reveals to cabaret reviewer Remy Block the secrets to her creative process and what inspires her songwriting.

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.

"If I get my sh*t right, you're gonna move," Michael Garin declared from the Metropolitan Room piano, energy crackling through every fiber of his compact form as he leaned into the microphone. On September 28, Garin opened his new show, A Punch In The Mouth, banging out a muscular, unexpected boogie-woogie 'Habañera' arrangement of 'Surf Carmen' (Bizet-Kern, arr. Garin). A 1992 Drama Desk winner (for the show Song of Singapore), Garin often performs with his 'tattooed ex-ingenue' wife Mardie Millet, but tonight she sat in the audience, leaving Garin to fend for himself. For the next hour, Garin held court at the keyboard, reeling off his show biz stories, teaching music theory, and wandering into emotional family history. 

Strange, enchanted boy David Vernon swept through the Metropolitan Room last Thursday night, greeting guests on his way to the stage. He cut a dashing, old-world figure in his long, fitted coat and austere, angular posture. The man possesses style. Opening his show LOVE: The Concert with Eden Abhez's 1941 beauty 'Nature Boy,' Vernon wove lines of dialogue into the singing, telling the beginnings of the spare yet vivid tale he would unspool over the course of the evening; the story of his two true loves, both men, which also contained the revelation of his own dual identities--masculine and feminine. 

Christine Lavin, prolific (and dang funny) songwriter and performer of the east coast cabaret and folk scenes, creates a hootenanny during her residency at Don't Tell Mama most Wednesday nights in September. Co-hosting the series is Don White, folk singer-songwriter and activist out of Lynhurst, MA. The special guest on the evening of September 9 was LA-based lyricist, singer, producer Hillary Rollins. Each weekly show features a guest with whom Lavin and White will sing and laugh and swap stories. It's a good time.

Back on May 14th, native New Yorkers Rachelle Garniez and Carol Lipnik each performed her own original songs at Joe's Pub, and while it was several months ago, the show remains embossed in my mind, as meaningful works of art have a way of doing. Each woman has a distinct and wonderful voice, both literally and figuratively. Both artists are exceedingly accomplished, writing and playing their music around New York City and the world for more than 30 years.

In Mr. Lucky, Jeff Macauley's urbane cabaret show featuring the songs of Henry Mancini, (which recently finished a three-show run at the Metropolitan Room) you learn that the famed composer came by his luck and success the old-fashioned way: single-minded purpose fueled by hard work and determination. Yet, Macauley, a former Bistro Award winner, makes telling Mancini's story look so easy. Debonair in his impeccable suit and fashionable specs, the singer uses a light touch to deliver songs he was determined to bring out of the background and into the spotlight.

In her new cabaret show Thirsty! (which returns to Joe's Pub for a second show on June 1 at 9:30), Scott regales the audience with tales of a young(ish) single woman living in New York City as an aspiring musical theater performer, whose antics tend to run toward the debauched, since she has 'no moral compass and [loves] being social.' Scott, named Time Out New York's Top Ten Cabaret Artist of 2013, has graced the stages of Joe's Pub, 54 Below, the Laurie Beechman, the Metropolitan Room, and every gay bar on the Eastern Seaboard.

I like Megan Hilty because she laughs a lot. She's fun! A young star of stage and screen-- having established herself as "Glinda" in Wicked on Broadway (2005-06) and subsequently becoming a TV star playing complicated and talented Ivy Lynn in the NBC hit musical drama Smash-Hilty opened her current run at the Cafe Carlyle Tuesday night to an excited, adoring audience. On stage with her band, directed by musical savant Matt Cusson--sporting a jaunty Newsies-style cap--at the keyboard (and including her husband Brian Gallagher on guitar, Ryan Hoagland on percussion, and Dennis Michael Keefe on upright bass), Hilty's effervescence was palpable, a heady mixture of genuine glee and sleep deprivation, as she effusively exclaimed her delight at being back at the Carlyle, following her last run when she was six-months pregnant. Now she has an eight-month old daughter. While her initial intention was to create a show about motherhood, the show ended up as a night of standards and Smash selections, giving the people what they know and love.

It wasn't so much watching a performance as it was bearing witness to an interior exploration, the chrysalis-busting conjuring of an artist stepping out of the shadows to claim her own territory. Lisa Fischer, the extraordinarily gifted vocalist featured in the 2014 Academy Award-winning documentary 20 Feet from Stardom, took the stage at Birdland for a run of shows from April 24-27. She was joined on stage by the band Grand Baton, led by musical director and arranger JC Maillard, filled out by Aidan Carroll on upright bass and Thierry Arpino on drums. Maillard, sporting blond dreads reminiscent of Lisa Bonet circa Lenny Kravitz, mostly played his custom made Sazbass, but also picked up the electric guitar and played keys. The set consisted of eight songs, including encore, but the arrangements were elastic, allowing each song to stretch into jams, riffs and solos, traversing diverse emotional and sonic terrain.

You probably know Gloria Reuben from the 1990s TV medical drama ER (in which she played Jeanie Boulet, an HIV-positive physician assistant on the hospital's staff). Or you may know her from playing the slave Elizabeth Keckley in the Steven Spielberg movie Lincoln. Or if you are super-cultured, you may know that she played Condoleeza Rice in David Hare's play, Stuff Happens. But I bet you didn't know that in 2000, she was one of Tina Turner's back up singers or that she began playing classical piano at age 5. But you should have known that Reuben sang at the Metropolitan Room last Thursday night to celebrate the release of her forthcoming CD, Perchance to Dream. I was there, so I now know that Gloria Reuben is not only an accomplished actor, but also a refined musician and an ethereal singer.

While the frat boys parked their boozy asses in the bar car (aka the couch) for the long road to the NCAA's Final Four over the past few weeks, NYC's village cabaret club The Duplex offered an alternative "March Madness": Cabaret shows about being crazy. As a devotee of time on a different sort of couch, I was drawn in to three separate performances--from Michael Shea, Stacie Koby, and Amber Petty--seeking some music therapy to get me through the tail end of a long winter.