Review: Zoë Van Tieghem A Breath of Fresh Air With SPRING FLING at The Green Room 42

Singing actress Zoë Van Tieghem played The Green Room 42 over the weekend and the crowd in the Midtown Manhattan nightclub could be heard sighing throughout the entire performance of SPRING FLING but the sighs segued to greedy groans when the songstress came to the end of the show. This audience did not want the music to end. They had good reason to protest, too, because Zoë Van Tieghem is simply lovely and the musicianship that she and Matt Baker are creating is worth every single audible reaction that an audience member might make during the course of their hour-long cabaret.

Zoë Van Tieghem is not a newcomer to the cabaret and concert scene. She has been playing out for a while, doing guest appearances, and continuing to pursue her career as an actress on both the boards and before the camera. What is new (relatively) is her partnership with Matt Baker, which started about a year ago, plus a few months. Zoë has met her MATTch, and no mistake - this is a dream combination that can and should yield greatness, and Spring Fling was merely the latest show to serve as proof positive. The reputation the artistic partners have been building has begun to precede them, and, more and more, interested parties are finding their way to the Matt and Zoë show.

For this new act, Ms. Van Tieghem gathered to her thirteen songs about love, most of them ballads, and the ones that weren't ballads got the ballad treatment, like The Cure's "Friday I'm In Love," and what a treat because Baker's arrangement for Van Tieghem is both inventive and interesting, but the truth is that all of the musical foundation Matt provides is of the utmost quality. A hypnotic and dramatic "So In Love" suits Zoë in ways simultaneously cool and steamy, and the duo's "Some Other Time" was so pretty, so pretty, so pretty, of both vocals and piano, as to melt the heart. It's like the duo was meant for each other, made for one another, and just waiting to meet, and what a relief it was when they did.

Spring Fling is not just a setlist, though: Zoë has crafted a rather neat little script for this cabaret that elevates it from a set to a show. It's not a big, grand, verbose script, either - it's more laidback and aloof, like a series of sonnets, urban poetry, if you will, creating a framework upon which to hang the musical selections that Zoë and Matt have arranged for the evening. Sometimes the connective tissue between numbers is a mere sentence, other times Zoë offers an economic monologue, and then there are times that a person might be in their head, asking if Zoë just did a haiku. It's art at its most accessible and least demanding because the themes that Zoë Van Tieghem follows are themes we all know: it's spring, we all have Seasonal Affected Disorder and sweater bodies, and we don't want to get involved with anyone... until a chance meeting, a couple of dates, some furtive looks, a sad sigh, a text sent, three dots, and the heartbreak or heartswell that come with all of it. Because Zoë kept her script a structure of poetic asides and verbal amuse-bouches, her audience was able to sit back and ride the slide from one sublime musical monologue to the next, and that's where Van Tieghem really lives, where Zoë really shines - in the music.

What we are talking about here is one of the most beautiful women you are ever going to look at in person with one of the most beautiful voices you are ever going to hear, live or otherwise. It's like someone took Ava Gardner, Sharon Tate, and Madeleine Stowe, threw in the voice of a siren, mixed and baked 'til the timer went off, and there was Zoë Van Tieghem. There are times when the experience of listening to Zoë Van Tieghem sing is surprising, sometimes really surprising. For example, Zoë and Matt chose to start the program with an appropriate "Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most" - a composition rich with soprano sounds, yet also possessing of opportunities for a singer to dip down, touch a low note, and then soar back up. The duo followed the opener with a one-two punch of a lush and lyrical "Some Enchanted Evening" and a "Where Or When" filled with concise acting choices, both of which broaden one's awareness of the scope with which Van Tieghem is working as a vocalist and a storyteller. By the time Zoë got to a sensual and sensational mash-up of "I Fall in Love Too Easily" and "Blame it On My Youth," it was well in the air that this is a voice so gorgeous that a person will never tire of it. And although Mr. Baker is a well-known jazz musician (thus creating an assumption that what this twosome is doing is jazz music) during this particular outing what the audience was presented with was straightforward crooning right off the top shelf. There may be jazz shows in the duo's past, there may be jazz shows in the duo's future, but this was honest-to-goodness balladic storytelling of a romantic nature to be enjoyed by anyone with a dedication or passion for sleepy shows of slow songs. It was just lovely, though the twosome will need to remain aware of maintaining a connection with the audience, as an entire program of ballads can sometimes leave a person feeling like they are watching through a window, a detached observer, rather than a character in the play - and the primary benefit of performing in cabaret is making the audience one of the lead players.

As a new show, Spring Fling's varnish is not quite dry yet. The script isn't firmly in Zoë's muscle memory, and that's ok - it happens with new shows, and it will get there. One of the things this writer would like to see Van Tieghem and Baker work on, while fine-tuning Spring Fling for its next outing, is the timing of the final word of patter so that it meets exactly with the first word of song. As Zoë tells the poem, the punchline, or the story, that last word needs to end just in time for her to start singing, rather than having the rhetoric end with five seconds to go until the song starts - that five-second gap is just enough time to diminish the theatricality of the storytelling. It's a delicate operation and a well-used format of cabaret storytelling that requires hours and hours of practice in order to feel spontaneous, but if Baker and Van Tieghem spend a little time perfecting this sort of transition, it would take Spring Fling to a whole new level of storytelling, one befitting of both their musical talents.

Of course, this is only a very specific suggestion being offered to assist ZVT and MB in making the most out of their magic. In truth, they could jettison their script (but please don't) and just sing (the "A House is Not A Home" must be placed in every show they do, from this moment forward) but it is very clear that these kids are here to tell stories - they haven't just come to sing a set. How else could they make the decision to have Zoë sit for a lengthy period of time in order to have Matt play his exciting original composition "Away"? They do this because it fits the story they are telling, because it fits with the trajectory they have created, because it matches their artistic intent. They do it because they are artistic partners who have their eye on the prize that is a fully realized artistic venture. To have a clear goal in one's work is important, especially when presenting a show that is a hybrid of nightclub, poetry slam, and recital, and this mission statement will inform future productions of Spring Fling and (one can presume) Zoë and Matt's other productions, of which this writer hopes there will be many.

Find great shows to see on the Green Room 42 website HERE.

Visit the Zoë Van Tieghem website HERE and the Matt Baker website HERE.

Photos by Stephen Mosher; Visit the Stephen Mosher website HERE.

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