On the eve of Halloween 2021, I ventured into Club Cumming in the East Village. It was festooned with cobwebs and an errant skull here and there; hanging from the ceiling throughout the bar were multiple close-up photos of Janet Leigh’s head just as she is about to take her legendary shower. It set the […]
I recently visited The Blue Room, a new (or at least new to me) cabaret upstairs from Good Judy, a friendly and comfortable gay bar on Fifth Ave in Brooklyn. The show room is a tiny, bare bones space with an upright piano on the stage, decent lights, and excellent sound. It’s a throwback in […]
If It Only Even Runs a Minute, which recently returned to Feinstein’s/ 54 Below, is the brainchild of Jennifer Ashley Tepper and Kevin Michael Murphy who serve as genial, enthusiastic, informative hosts for a show dedicated to samples from and stories about the flops of Broadway history. It is not a new idea, but this […]
In their new CD, What to Wear in the Dark, the Kate McGarry and Keith Ganz Ensemble have fashioned a musically intriguing and emotionally satisfying response, not only to the pandemic but to the last decade or two of public and private wounds and monstrous elections. Kate McGarry has long been one of the brightest lights in […]
The skilled storyteller Rian Keating‘s Time Stamps—Life Fragments in Story and Song is a series of personal stories with music. The show took its structure from the assignments in a memoir writing class Rian attended. The device worked well, the stories time-stamped and full of dry and arresting intelligent humor, observations, sadness, and common ground. They were linked by […]
Ann Kittredge was in her element at Birdland Theater with her latest cabaret offering, “Movie Nite.” In a show packed with well-chosen songs from classic (and sometimes more contemporary) Hollywood, Kittredge and her team’s creative instincts were on-target: she sounded as if her voice has come home to her ideal material, her vintage sequined dress […]
Singer Jenna Esposito’s invigorating new album, More Amore: Songs from the Great Italian-American Songbook, is a family affair. Its rousing arrangements are by the singer’s father, Fortune Esposito. Her sister, Kelly Esposito-Broelmann, sings back-up, while her nephew, Charlie Broelmann, plays drums, and her husband, Jimmy Cannizzaro, serves as a percussionist and associate producer. Everyone knows […]
When I am teaching a vocal performance class, I always stress that just because a singer loves to listen to a song doesn’t mean that the singer should sing it. In the case of Susan Mack’s Music in the Air at Birdland, I would expand that to include if a singer loves a genre of […]
Scott Raneri is a good singer with an extremely likable stage presence. He has a rich concept for a show in Extra! Extra! The Extra Adventures of an Actor. He’s good looking and has a ‘60s nightclub entertainer vibe, slight and slick, nicely put together. Scott is fairly new on the scene: This is his second […]
Jane Bruce and TUCKER are such charismatic, charming performers that it goes a long way towards forgiveness of the flaws that pepper their new show, Jane & TUCKER: Stripped, at Feinstein’s/54 Below. Bruce, fresh from a Tony Awards performance with Jagged Little Pill, and cabaret veteran TUCKER have good voices, infectious energy, and winning personalities. […]