Review: HERE COME THE DREAMERS As MAUDE MAGGART Comes Back To Sing at Birdland

If you were encountering singer Maude Maggart for the first time, in her act’s first several minutes you might think you had witnessed a cryogenical first.  Was this the premiere scientific success of bringing back from the deep freeze a singer who’d lived in an antique age, preserved like a delicate butterfly in resin? Or was she the fairy tale-famous awakened Sleeping Beauty (who’d, in fact, be the subject of a song later)? There she was, an elegant gossamer vision, spinning romantic words and tenderly trilling in a high silvery soprano with a rapid vibrato, the classic ingenue.  In a grand gown, quaint and untouched by the harsh modern era, brought to bloom like a fragile flower in the nurturing warm light of a greenhouse (the reasonable facsimile of Birdland Jazz Club’s dramatic spotlight), was this a mirage that would vanish into the mist ? Or was it a fever dream? Or perhaps you had too many pre-show cocktails?  No, no, it’s merely Maude and her set focused on songs ABOUT dreams and imagination.  And soon enough we’d get a down-to-earth reality check and check into the present and other styles of singing and humor.  Yes, the lady can be slyly funny, with excellent comic timing. But the “earlier era” sensibility and an ability to show vulnerability let us, with awe, sigh “Awwwww” as she awwwwthentically inhabits the innocence and inspirations recalling damsels of yore.  

Here Come the Dreamers is cotton candy with some spice.  Material is well chosen from the vast wealth of songs written about dreams — the kind we have when asleep, daydreams, and aspirations.  After we’re settled in, somewhat, there’s a section recalling storybook heroines – the aforementioned Sleeping Beauty, as well as Cinderella (although when Maggart shifts back into the voice patterns described above, the timbre is most reminiscent of another dreamy girl: Disney’s sound of Snow White, as provided by Adriana Caselotti).

I remember interviewing Maude Maggart years ago, when she was making her splendid splash in New York City cabaret at the Algonquin’s Oak Room, and I asked her what, despite the reviews and advance press, people don’t yet know about her. She frowned and said, “Nobody knows I’m a dancer.” She’s fixed that by incorporating dance movement in one number. Judy Collins’s “My Father” tells of a parent’s promise that one day “I would learn to dance,” then more soberly reflecting “grown-up dreams.” It segues into the likewise reflective “Speaking of Dreams” by another folk music heroine, Joan Baez.  The kind of optimism and idealism that keeps us young, or at least young at heart, is reinforced with the advice to “Look to the Rainbow” and “follow the fellow who follows a dream,” and the wish to go “Over the Rainbow” where “the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.”  (We can thank E.Y. Harburg for both those lyrics.)  And when Maude Maggart asks the audience to sing along on “The Rainbow Connection,” they do so, warmly, needing no help to remember the words.  It proves that the singer was among kindred spirits, described in that lyric as “the lovers, the dreamers, and me.” Maude Maggart’s act (musical director: Jerry Sternbach) pulls us into her enchanted and classy dreamworld until she thoughtfully brings us gently back down to earth with that sentiment we first heard from that wise philosopher, Kermit the Frog.    

The night after this one-nighter, this musical Maude was a highlight of the first night of The Cabaret Convention (Jazz at Lincoln Center) multi-performer concerts ending on Thursday, October 19. 

Maude Maggart’s website is HERE  

The Birdland website is HERE.

Photo of Maude Maggart by Gor Megaera