Ricky Pope - Page 4

So what does a cabaret director do? Today in my ongoing series, THERE ARE NO ONE-PERSON SHOWS, we will find out from one of the busiest cabaret directors in New York, Marc Tumminelli. Marc is the founder of Broadway Workshop, which provides year-round, professional-level classes and workshops for kids 8-19 with some of the finest artists working on Broadway and in the West End. He is also the founder of Project Broadway, a non-profit that provides scholarship opportunities to young performers.

Linda Purl has the kind of career that actors dream of. Since she began in the 70s on the daytime drama Secret Storm, she has rarely had a period in which she was not working. She has appeared in films like Crazy Mama, Visiting Hours, Mighty Joe Young, and Fear of the Dark. She has appeared on Broadway in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Getting and Spending, and Off-Broadway in The Baby Dance. With over 50 television movies to her credit, she is a perennial presence on the small screen. She has had recurring roles on Matlock, Murder, She Wrote, The Office, Homeland, and The Oath, among dozens of others. She has the distinction of having played two different characters on the classic sitcom Happy Days. In Season 2, she played Richie Cunningham's girlfriend Gloria. Eight seasons later she played the Fonz's fianceé, Ashley.

THE MELODY LINGERS ON: A GALA TRIBUTE TO THE SONGS OF IRVING BERLIN was a gathering of some of the biggest names in the cabaret world. There’s something a little odd about celebrating the intimate art of cabaret in a Broadway-sized theatre like Rose Hall, but to be honest it was one of the few venues sizable enough to hold all the cabaret fans who came to see this fine collection of talented artists. There were performances from Sandy Stewart, Jeff Harner, Andrea Marcovicci, Eric Yves Garcia, Karen Oberlin, David LaMarr, Natalie Douglas, Stacy Sullivan & Todd Murray, Karen Akers, Steve Ross, Amra-Faye Wright, Klea Blackhurst, Billy Stritch, Aisha de Haas, Christine Andreas, Sidney Myer, Karen Mason, Nicolas King, Mark Nadler, and the Moipai Triplets. In addition to these wonderful performers, we were treated to some of NYC’s best musicians including Ray Marchicka, Steve Doyle, Jon Weber, Bill Charlap, Darnell White, Alex Rybeck, Mark Hummel, Michael Rice, and Tracy Stark.

As has often been reported, Marilyn Maye appeared on the Tonight Show a record-setting 76 times and was Johnny Carson’s personal measure of excellence for any other singer who appeared on his show.  As a cabaret performer, it is not hyperbole to say she simply has no peer. She is the person that everyone who sets foot on a nightclub stage, sings a jazz riff, or dabbles in The Great American Songbook looks to for inspiration and instruction. There is no getting around it, Marilyn Maye is the undisputed gold standard.

Jacob Khalil is a fairly recent resident of New York. He moved here only a year ago after time spent in Texas and Utah and Las Vegas. His style is remarkably eclectic. At the root, he is a jazz artist, but he also dabbles in piano-based pop, standards, and straight-up show tunes. He also is very at home as a singer/songwriter. Jacob Khalil is exactly the musician that New York was designed for. He is a very talented singer in search of an individual voice.

Lorna Luft is a consummate entertainer. That’s no surprise of course. She was born to entertain. Her mother, Judy Garland was arguably the greatest entertainer of the 20th century. And Lorna has been entertaining professionally herself since she was 14 years old. Her high-profile turns in the film Grease 2 and as Miss Adelaide in the national tour of Guys & Dolls are only two of her many film, television, and stage credits. She has also been a very in-demand nightclub performer for decades. Over the years she has known and worked with some of the very best.

Blackhurst is no stranger to the world of Jerry Herman. She played Dolly Levi in the 50th-anniversary production of Hello, Dolly! at the Goodspeed Opera House with the enthusiastic endorsement of Herman himself. Her show is a loving tribute, filled with the big hit songs as well as some more enchanting obscure tunes, all tied together with some informative and sometimes dishy stories about the legendary composer of Milk & Honey, Hello, Dolly! Mame, Dear World, Mack & Mabel, The Grand Tour, La Cage aux Folles, and many others.

This coming Saturday, October 23 is officially Tin Pan Alley Day in NYC. As a physical destination, Tin Pan Alley is five buildings at 47-55 W. 28th St. near the Flatiron building in the neighborhood called “NoMad,” north of Madison Square Park. But Tin Pan Alley is much more than a physical destination. It is a state of mind. It is the spot where the American music industry was born. From the 1890s to around 1910, this block of publishing houses and agent’s offices was where you went if you had written a song that you wanted the world to hear it. Many of our most illustrious Broadway composers got their start plugging songs in the offices of Tin Pan Alley including Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, and Jerome Kern.

How would you feel if you could remember every single day of your life? That is the focus of MARILU HENNER: MUSIC & MEMORIES!, which returned this evening to 54 Below. Ms. Henner walked us through some of her favorite memories from her decades in show business. It would actually be more accurate to say she danced us through some of her favorite memories, for Ms. Henner is a performer almost constantly in motion. She has been dancing from the age of two. Her mother ran a dance studio in her hometown of Chicago for 20 years, and Henner is still in fit dancing condition. She is the author of two books about health.

At its heart, MELISSA ERRICO SINGS HER NEW YORK is not a show about New York, or songs about New York, although both of those things are prominently featured. Rather it is about one woman's lifelong experience of New York City, with all of the dreams, obsessions, joys, heartbreaks, terror, and rapture that come with living, working, and loving in the world's most exciting and most irritating city. It is about a woman who made the short journey from Long Island with nothing but some dance shoes, a voice, and a dream and acquired a home, friends, a career, a husband, and a family, along with a journal full of memories and experiences. In short, a life.

Today we kick off the series with my conversation with musical director, Tracy Stark. She is one of the most prolific musical directors on the NY scene, playing upwards of 75-100 shows a year. She is the winner of 11 MAC awards in addition to the Bistro award and the Dottie Burman Songwriter of the Year award. She has worked with a plethora of great artists including Lesley Gore, Sarah Dash, Phoebe Snow, Karen Black, Randy Jones, Jimmy Osmond, Tovah Feldshuh, Eric Millegan. Tonya Pinkins, Ann Crumb, Marni Nixon, and hundreds of other rock, jazz, and Broadway artists. In the past 6 months, I have seen shows she worked on with Alice Ripley, Kim David Smith, and Meg Flather.

The room at 54 Below tonight was rocking with the beats of many genres of music blended together into an evening of joy and gratitude. The show was billed as AN EVENING WITH SERGE CLIVIO AND FRIENDS VOL. 2. There is truth in advertising. There were many friends who graced the stage with Clivio. This is the fourth time Serge has appeared at 54 Below including his previous Vol. 1 show which included some of the same friends gathered from his time at school and from the start-up company where he works. But tonight was a special night. After an especially challenging year, the singer was donating all the proceeds of tonight’s show to Memorial Sloan Kettering. And even though Clivio said he didn’t want the show to be about that (and it wasn’t,) the fact that they were speaks volumes about the heart and soul of this young and talented performer.

Barbara Bleier and Austin Pendleton are at it again. But to be honest, even during the pandemic they were never gone. They created a show that Pangea streamed for virtual audiences. Tonight that show LIFE, AND LOVE, AND WHO KNOWS WHAT ELSE?  had its debut in front of a live audience in the back room of Pangea. Bleier explained to us that when they were putting the show together two years ago, they intended to write a show with a political theme. But in these extraordinary times, they have discovered that really everything is political. Everything. And that’s the show they have put together: an evening about the politics of patriotism, the politics of career, the politics of aging, the politics of men and women, the politics of marriage, the politics of family, and the politics of falling in love. It is, in fact, a show about everything.

Angela Bacari is 78 years young. But nothing in either her appearance of performance belies that fact. The woman has pipes and she knows how to use them. She is a jazz stylist who can rank with some of the greats. She can belt to the rafters but is also capable of very tender passages. She has an amazingly supple technique, which explains why she is so in demand as a vocal coach to the stars, counting Liza Minelli, Marisa Berenson, Deana Martin, and Billy Gilman among her protegés. She has appeared on The Merv Griffin Show, and The Dinah Shore Show as well as opening for Rodney Dangerfield, Phyllis Diller, Bill Cosby, and Pat Cooper. But last night, she was the headliner and the crowd went wild for her. It was been nearly 40 years since Ms. Bacari has made an appearance on the NY stage and it is highly overdue.

Rian Keating is a masterful storyteller. His stories are filled with humanity. And even though his tales are very personal and specific, they remind us all that at the heart of things, we are all struggling with the same emotions and challenges. We are all looking for our place in the world while dealing with challenges and joys and heartbreaks. This is the focus of his new show TIME STAMPS: FRAGMENTS OF A LIFE IN STORY AND SONG which opened last night at Don’t Tell Mama. You may remember Rian Keating from the early days of NY cable access when he interviewed some of the biggest theatre celebrities on his show SPOTLIGHT.  Or you may have seen one of his many shows at Don’t Tell Mama where he shared his stories and songs. Rian has spent many years in education, as a teacher and on the board of education. This show, like all of his theatrical endeavors, was a fundraiser for the GOLDEN DOOR SCHOLARSHIP, an endowment dedicated to undocumented students who do not otherwise have funds available for higher education. Keating is a special person, indeed.

Justin Vivian Bond brought vself new show STORMING THE GLAMPARTS to Joe's Pub inside the beautiful Public Theatre this week. I was lucky enough to catch Thursday night's performance and was dazzled by the brilliance of Bond's talent, brains, and beauty. V is a true one-of-a-kind entertainer. V is outrageous while being grounded in very traditional entertainment forms. V presents vself as a chanteuse with a good deal of diva energy. V arrangements by musical director, Matt Ray are all firmly rooted in the cabaret vernacular. But Justin Vivian Bond goes to a level beyond simply cabaret. V show is a good-natured exposé of everything that's important in 2021. And even though Bond claims to rate low on the empathy scale, v show is the perfect picture of inclusion, empathy, and love.

I took a second look at OLD SOULS. I’m glad I went. I would say about 80% of the show was the same as it was at Don’t Tell Mama. But with new songs, the new configuration of the band, and being in a room that is designed for rock and roll, OLD SOULS  was a very different experience. Everything about the show was tighter, more in the groove, more amped up, and a more authentic representation of Chinnock & Harris. The two men have different approaches to classic rock. Jared Chinnock is a more bombastic performer whereas Evan Buckley Harris is more laid back. In their Don’t Tell Mama show, the difference in their styles was obvious in some discrepancies in phrasing. In this new incarnation of the show, they seem to have met each other in the middle. Chinnock has found a more lyrical quality in his stratospheric tenor and Harris has found places to let loose and wail. They have found their voice as a group.

Eleri Ward's concert tonight at Rockwood Music Hall served as an album release of sorts. She performed selections from her new album A PERFECT LITTLE DEATH for a very appreciative audience comprised of both Sondheim fans and fans of indie music alike. If you weren’t a fan of Eleri Ward coming in, it’s unlikely that you left without being captivated by her. Her voice is crystalline pure, inhabiting the same effortless soprano world as Judy Collins before her. Her arrangements are rhapsodic and filled with yearning. She was visibly moved to be performing in front of a live audience again. Her performance was intimate and vulnerable and touching.

Maria Corsaro has teamed up with the wonderful Sue Matsuki, who in her directing debut has fashioned a tight and clever new show that showcases Maria Corsaro’s dark, rich voice in a series of songs that started life as jazz instrumentals and had lyrics added to them later, sometimes decades later. The show, YOU TAUGHT MY HEART TO SING, had its premiere last Saturday at Pangea. I was lucky enough to be in the audience. Corsaro has a lovely voice and chose a very ambitious set of tunes that for the most part show her off to great advantage. Besides being a fine jazz artist, Corsaro is a woman with a very big heart that she loves to share with her audience.

Marcus Simeone is a singer of great range and much soul. He is fearless in going to very intimate, emotional places. He is also a born storyteller, creating vivid images with only a few words. Sean Harkness plays guitar like he made a deal with the devil. His fingers do things that should be impossible. He plays every inch of the instrument, not only the strings but the fingerboard, the frets, the bridge and he even uses the body of the guitar as percussion. The partnership between these two artists is so simpatico, it feels like one mind.