Review: Blaine Alden Krauss FROM THE SOUL PART II Fills Feinstein's/54 Below With Love, Delirium, and Excellence

It was difficult to be at 54 Below last night for the Blaine Alden Krauss show and not feel sorry for the people in the club... not, of course, the people who were there on time. The people deserving of sorrow and pity were the ones who came in late, a tragedy, or the ones who didn't come at all, a travesty. Can you imagine showing up late for a Blaine Alden Krauss Show? What about knowing that there is a Blaine Alden Krauss show happening and knowingly skipping it - is there an explanation for that? Mr. Krauss, clearly a most realistic and honest man, told the audience last night that he knows what 54 Below tickets cost ("I know what you did to get here") and he's right - a night out in a fine club at a superb show isn't something you spend money on every day. But there comes a time in everyone's life when they have to ask themselves that one important question: "Am I going to go see Blaine Alden Krauss perform live, or am I going to pay the rent?" The landlord can wait. The world is filled with people who were there at the beginning of Barbra Streisand's career, people who saw her in intimate clubs like the Bon Soir - and then there are the people who paid two grand to sit behind the stage and watch Streisand on the jumbotron while looking at her back. Don't be the latter: see Blaine Krauss now, while you still can.

Blaine Alden Krauss is not just a singer. He's not just an actor, he's not just a dancer, he's not just a social media health and fitness guru. Blaine Alden Krauss is not just a gay, bi-racial man who can make you swoon with a four-octave singing voice, a devastating smile, and hypnotic eyes (and that's just discussing what's above the neck). Blaine Alden Krauss is one of the most passionate, philosophical, eloquent, emotional, intelligent, empathic human beings ever to be witnessed on a stage. Indeed, anyone worried about money could write a Blaine Alden Krauss show off as a medical expense because while he was on the Feinstein's stage last night, the audience was healing themselves. They were healing their souls and their bodies through his music, through his rhetoric, and through the lessons to be learned by being nearby to listen to both.

This was not a cabaret show. This was a group healing session.

In one short hour, Mr. Krauss populates FROM THE SOUL PART II with twelve songs everyone knows and his new hit dance mix HAUS OF LOVE... but you never heard these twelve songs before, not until you've heard them his way. Whether you're a fan of Stevie Wonder (whose music opens the show) or a devotee of The Jacksons (whose song closes the show), whether you know every Judy Garland song ever recorded or know every musical performance from The Muppet Show, whether you favor Queen Beyonce or follow Prince, whether you'd rather play Dear Evan Hansen or A Little Night Music, the experience of watching BAK perform the music of your idol will, forever, remain trapped in your memory, and in your heart. Waiting for a bootleg video to be uploaded to YouTube is always an option (and there were iPhones in action last night so that is definitely in the air) but no recorded archive will ever be able to adequately duplicate the thrill of being in the same room with the roller coaster that is his voice or the rolling river that is his dancing, both of which are backed up by a tidal wave of love: love for the music, love for the audience, love for the act of being alive. In conversation that feels unrehearsed (which means a professional like Blaine rehearsed until he could do it while sleeping) Blaine discusses the last few months, his life, his needs, his desires, his thoughts, his feelings, and he keeps it all cohesive by keeping it always real. Real people are very rare. When you find one, whether they are a friend, a mentor, a favorite performer, hang onto them. Blaine is all of those things and more to the people in the audience and that is why he is the next big thing. No, not even big... Blaine Alden Krauss is poised to be bigger than the sky (which is only slightly bigger than his voice, but only slightly). Once he has achieved the entertainment industry status that is coming his way, it may become more difficult to get those tickets, so now is the time to see what he and his musical director, wonderful Darnell White, have been tearing up, examining, and reassembling musically in order to show audiences that love is the strongest choice, that each of us is worthy of choosing ourself, and that life may not be easy, but the only way to live your life is to go out there and eat life.

You get all this from a sixty-minute nightclub act by Blaine Krauss. How incredibly amazing.

So, for pity's sake, don't be late.

The Blaine Alden Krauss band is Darnell White, Danny Mallon, Magda Kress, Kenneth Simpson, Shaunice Alexander, and Carmi Harris

Blaine Alden Krauss: FROM THE SOUL II plays Feinstein's/54 Below again on July 15th at 9:45 pm. For information and tickets visit the 54 Below website HERE.

Follow Blaine Alden Krauss on Instagram HERE on Facebook HERE and on Twitter HERE.

Photos by Stephen Mosher

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