Jessica Molaskey: Bridging Worlds

To watch Jessica Molaskey take the microphone in the Algonquin's legendary Oak Room, one would think that she had been singing in posh cabarets for decades. But compared to many performers at the Oak Room and Feinstein's, Ms. Molaskey is a newcomer to the cabaret scene. Broadway cognoscenti, on the other hand, have known Ms. Molaskey for years as one of the most versatile and reliable performers in the business. She played Mrs. Walker in Tommy, Mme. Thenardier in Les Mis, Mrs. Phagan (and, at one memorable performance, and with no rehearsal, Lucille Frank) in Parade, and Mrs. Patrick in A Man of No Importance, to name only a few.When she married popular jazz guitarist John Pizzarelli, however, the Broadway baby stepped into a different kind of musical world. With the support of her husband and his family, she gradually began transforming herself into a cabaret songstress, and now frequents the best rooms in the city. With three critically lauded albums and popular concerts all over town, Jessica Molaskey has become the toast of New York's cabaret community.

With grace and humility, Ms. Molaskey credits her husband with her success. Seven years ago, she explains, Allen Sviridoff of Feinstein's at the Regency suggested that Ms. Molaskey join her husband onstage and make the Pizzarelli concert a family show. "The first time I did it," she recalls, "I was absolutely petrified, because I'd never been onstage really as myself, without wigs or costumes, just being me." The gamble paid off, and she became a welcome addition at Pizzarelli family performances. "I don't think I would have been able to do it the first year without [John]," she says, and adds that despite her personal success, she continues to rely upon him. "I just know if anything goes wrong I can just turn to him. He is the consummate vaudevillian performer."

Somewhat a mirror of her personal life, her performance style marries jazz and theatre, giving standard songs in both genres a breath of fresh air if not a completely new life. As a Broadway veteran of twenty years, her approach to a song is very different from that of a more traditional cabaret singer. "I never think of me just playing a song," she says. "I think, 'Who is this character singing this particular song?... To me, what we're doing isn't really cabaret; it's a hybrid. It's really a musical set of jazz that has a theatrical thread through it. I prefer for the songs to be like little plays."

"I think sometimes [songs] choose me," she continues. "I was walking down the street, and that song 'Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter' came into my head. I started thinking, 'What an interesting, hopeful, bittersweet idea.' Obviously, this woman is alone, and nobody's writing her any love letters, so she's gonna sit down and write it for herself and make believe that it came from that person." The end result is a surprisingly poignant rendition of the song, with plenty of melancholy permeating the hopeful and quirky lyrics. "I'm always attracted to the happy/sad duality in a song," Ms. Molaskey says. "[Torch songs] aren't that interesting, because to me, they're only one color, and I love things that have different shades in them."

As a relative newcomer to the legendary Pizzarelli musical family, Ms. Molaskey has had to adjust her style to fit the jazzy improvisations that have made John, his father Bucky, and his brother Martin so popular. "The hardest thing about this gig," she muses, "is that I never get rehearsal. I got one rehearsal the day before we [opened], so I was walking around New York thinking 'What if I put this song here?' But there's something also incredibly freeing about that," she continues, "because you really have to listen and breathe and be there. That's when anything can happen. It's like being in a play."

Her theatrical experience has also proven useful in creating a self-guided evening that blends Pizzarelli improvisation and Molaskey structure. "When you've done a lot of shows as an understudy, you learn to have a kind of internal director inside of you," Ms. Molaskey says. She credits some of the legendary directors with whom she has worked with her ability to rapidly adjust on any kind of stage, and to instinctively know what songs and emotional moments will work best together. "When we were in tech rehearsals for shows," she recalls, "I always tended to want to sit in the house and see what Hal Prince was going to do. It was like taking a master class. I think that helps you in the long run; there's always that internal voice saying, 'This moment would be better here.' ... You know how to direct your own little play." Her stage experience also taught her to find the emotional core of a song, and to bring an audience into that core. "The most important thing," she muses, "is that you're always trying to tell the truth, and being in the moment. That's the absolute center of it, and the rest is just technique."

While the cabaret world has been very welcoming of this new star, she admits that, if the right role came along, she would happily return to Broadway. "If you have a life in the theatre– and I started when I was 19– there are going to be times when you're transitioning, when you're in between," she says. "Right now, at my age, nobody knows if I'm the mother, if I'm the grandmother, if I'm still the girlfriend. I'm just in one of those places, and [cabaret is] a perfect place for me to be transitioning. I'm still working, I'm learning and growing, and it couldn't have been a more wonderful gift for me to be able to do this. And I have much more control. I'm not waiting for my agent to say 'Somebody finally wrote a part for you.' I still hope that happens, but I'm continuing to do my work."

"There is something about a group of actors being in a room with writers and making a play happen that is magic and will always be my first love," she continues. "But there is [also] something about pushing the personal edges of your envelope, about sustaining an evening of stories and songs that personally has been an unbelievably thrilling experience for me. It's harder than anything I've ever done."

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