At Pangea recently, singer-instrumentalist Hannah Reimann reveled in her love of all things Joni in her show, Both Sides Now – The Music of Joni Mitchell 1966-1974. As the title indicates, she focused on the songwriter’s first six albums; this was a wise choice since those recordings contain most of her “hits” and her most accessible, […]
Audiences seem to enjoy theatrical “back-stagers” featuring estranged couples in the entertainment world who squabble their way to a happy denouement. Think of the scrumptious love-hate relationship between Lilli Vanessi and Fred Graham in Kiss Me, Kate or the similarly tasty one between Lili Garland and Oscar Jaffee in On the Twentieth Century. Now, performers […]
Although, by her own reckoning, she’s been a professional singer since 1987, Luba Mason postponed performing her first fully autobiographical cabaret show until Luba Mason – 5’10”, her recent outing at The Green Room 42. From an audience point of view, it was well worth the wait. Apart from the expected (and delivered) powerful and wide-ranging […]
Whenever students or singers that I’m directing adopt a personal-confession format for their performance, I am quick to point out that while there should be truth on stage, there don’t necessarily have to be facts. The best singers allow the audience to experience their own moments of joy, grief, or passion through the storytelling of […]
Singer Carol McCann described the theme of her new show, Music Lessons (recently seen at Pangea in an encore performance), as a collection of songs from which she has learned something. It’s a simple concept, made all the more simple because she never really delved into the interesting possibilities that the title evoked. It became, […]
For her show Like a Perfumed Woman (directed by Lina Koutrakos), recently at Birdland Theater, Joanne Halev drew on her career experience in the world of “fragrance creation.” (For years, she traveled the globe in search of exotic and intoxicating scents.) She had fun with the “fragrance” motif, noting that songs and fragrances alike are […]
Nostalgia can cover a multitude of sins or situations. Even better if the nostalgia is shared. In the case of Andrea McArdle’s recent new show at Feinstein’s/54 Below, the happy remembrance of things past was needed to leaven only one ongoing hiccup. And this particular glitch her audience’s group nostalgia overcame very nicely indeed. “I’m […]
Somewhat as a sequel to Stories, her New York cabaret debut nearly a decade ago, Corinna Sowers Adler recently offered Second Stories at the Triad Theater. But this stunning, hour-long set proved to be so much more than a mere follow-up to a prior clutch of story songs. This time out, in a wide-ranging selection […]
There is a particular pleasure to be had in listening to good pop songs sung by their creators. Whether it’s Jimmy Webb or Sheldon Harnick or Paul Williams or Harold Arlen, there’s a palpable connection to the material, obviously, but there’s also a more gentle, conversational delivery of both lyric and melody that sets each […]
For every “We’ll love each other madly forever” anthem, it seems that there are at least a couple of “Waaah!—we’re through” songs. At Don’t Tell Mama, the talented Andrea Axelrod investigates the latter category in After the Bawl (Recovery from Hearthache), with musical director John Cook at the piano. I’m mentioning Cook at the outset […]
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