Roseanna Vitro Project

Mark Dundas Wood
The "project" in the title of this show refers to jazz singer and music teacher Roseanna Vitro's efforts to generate smart and graceful lyrics for the late Charlie Parker's bebop compositions. Sing a Song of Bird: The Music of Charlie Parker—staged as a one-nighter at Jazz at Kitano—is clearly a work in progress. Some songs...

Vicki Kristina Barcelona

Gerry Geddes
Rachelle Garniez, Amanda Homi, and Terry Radigan are accomplished singers, songwriters, and musicians with thriving solo careers. It was a shared love of the songs of reprobate troubadour Tom Waits that brought the women together to form the trio Vicki Kristina Barcelona. Recently on the intimate stage at Pangea, their show, Yesterday Is Here, proved...

Kayley Hill

Penelope Thomas
Fresh from Nashville, Kayley Hill is an heir to the Dolly Parton sound, with a sweet, clear, cut-through voice and a whole lot of power. Her country and rockabilly sensibilities are contemporary: she's equally at home throwing in a very complex soul melisma as she is working that break between registers or occasionally yodeling as...

Gretchen Reinhagen

Robert Windeler
When a cabaret show begins with the song "Life Sucks and Then You Die" (Ray Jessel) you might be forgiven for thinking you're in for yet another "poor me" sob story without benefit of even a minimally redeeming happy ending. But in the case of Gretchen Reinhagen's recent, entirely enjoyable set at Don't Tell Mama,...

Shemekia Copeland

Penelope Thomas
The Blues are the best! From rock blues, to bluegrass and country, to gospel, there's someone out there who has it worse than you do. If the cause is a cheating lover, a lost job, breaking the law because you had to, or the devil himself, in the blues you're a good person in a...

Norm Lewis

Mark Dundas Wood
For the third year in a row, theatre, film, and TV actor-singer Norm Lewis is performing a holiday-oriented program at Feinstein's/54 Below. The opening night of this year's offering, Santa Baby!, appears to have brought out a group of his most ardent, demonstrative fans. There's plenty to like in Lewis the cabaret performer—starting, of course,...

Eric Hoffman

Penelope Thomas
Eric Hoffman can swing, and he has a versatile baritone voice and a good jazz education as an instrumentalist, but there's an unexpected twist: he really hits his stride when he's being a lounge singer. There may be something in the corny fun, nostalgia, and swagger of a lounge act that catches Hoffman's sense of...

Shequida: Jessye Normous

Gerry Geddes
Shequida is the drag alter ego of Jamaican-born, Julliard-trained opera singer Gary Hall, and Jessye Normous is the drag alter ego of Shequida. This is all quite meta for the small world of cabaret, but what really matters is that his/her/their new show was a mostly hilarious and highly entertaining event. The evening began with...

Peggi Blu

Gerry Geddes
Lee Summers's Just A Piano concert series, now in its tenth year at the Triad Theater, recently presented Peggi Blu in Sinatra in Blu – If Sinatra Were Born a Black Woman, which she wrote. A grand champion on TV's Star Search, Blue later became a vocal coach on American Idol, while continuing a career in...

Paula West

Penelope Thomas
When it comes to singers, do we have to choose between a musician and a storyteller? Any well-realized choice along the spectrum from pure music to pure theatre can work for a vocalist, and in the best singers, it's hard to tell where one stops and the other begins. Paula West is that kind of...