Dawn Derow

Robert Windeler
In so many ways, 1941 was a very good year in America. It was the year Joe DiMaggio scored hits in a record 56 straight games, leading the Yankees to yet another World Series win. The movies gave us such classics as Citizen Kane and Rebecca, and it cost only 25 cents to see them....

The 28th New York Cabaret Convention

Bistro Awards
The 28th edition of the New York Cabaret Convention, presented by the Mabel Mercer Foundation, took place October 16-19 at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Penelope Thomas, Mark Dundas Wood, Gerry Geddes, and Robert Windeler covered the four nights for us. Following are their thoughts.     Gala Opening Night – by...

Frances Ruffelle

Penelope Thomas
Frances Ruffelle’s voice sounds like diamond dust: just so pretty and so gritty that you could listen to it sparkle roughly for hours. If Éponine had had the chance to grow up, this is who she’d be: streetwise, lovelorn, and European…singing to share the hard-won wisdom she attained through heartbreak and owning that wild edge....

Christine Andreas

Gerry Geddes
Christine Andreas's show Love Is Good proved, once again, that she is a consummate cabaret performer. There could not have been a better closing engagement for Mark Nadler's wonderful (and wonderfully successful) summer cabaret series at the Beach Cafe. In the intimate space that feels as much like a living room as a music room,...

Leslie Carrara-Rudolph

Mark Dundas Wood
I'll never forget the day my brother and I were spurned by Wunda Wunda. The TV story lady of the Pacific Northwest was a tall, stately yet somehow dainty clown character. I was 8 and Brian was 6 when we had our encounter with Wunda at the Seattle World's Fair. While she fawned over the...

Gabrielle Stravelli

Mark Dundas Wood
In her recent one-off at Birdland, City Girl, Country Boy: Gabrielle Stravelli Sings Willie Nelson, the singer put a guitar-free jazz spin on some of the country legend's biggest hits—his self-penned songs, as well as other writers' titles that he's performed and/or recorded over the decades. Some performers might fret about just how smoothly this...

J. Michael Reeds and Marc McBarron Kessler

Gerry Geddes
Songwriter-pianist Marc McBarron Kessler could not hope to find a better interpreter of his song cycle, Ghost of Vaudeville, than actor-singer J. Michael Reeds, whose bravura performance on stage at Don't Tell Mama held my interest and attention even when the songs, themselves, faltered in that regard. Kessler is a talented composer and lyricist, but this...

Tom Goss

Gerry Geddes
Tom Goss is an out gay singer-songwriter, or more to the point, a singer-songwriter who happens to be an out gay man. He has built a following and a career primarily through an ongoing series of videos—by turns funny, provocative, heartwarming, dramatic—of his engaging songs. But he takes his sexual orientation as a given, so...

Tamra Paselk

Penelope Thomas
Awkward, Tamra Paselk's recent show at Don't Tell Mama (directed by Casey Burden), answered a few questions: are those high-rise pants that are coming back into style a good idea? YES. Should all performers hand out frozen treats at their cabaret? A thousand times YES. The bigger issues, however, were left somewhat unresolved. Since death...

Livingston Taylor

Gerry Geddes
The Rubin Museum of Art on W. 17th Street is a restful, almost zen-like space that inspires calm and contemplative silence. The museum's ongoing series, Naked Soul, takes place in a small, attractive performance space with cherry wood walls and a lone piano center stage. The mission of the series is to present completely acoustic events—no...