“The Journey of Jazz” an engrossing musical voyage through American music – and American social history

“The Journey of Jazz” an engrossing musical voyage through American music – and American social history

A history of American jazz in 90 minutes? The Anderson Brothers’ “The Journey of Jazz” does so in fascinating pastiche of music and visuals, starting with Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag,” smartly performed by pianist Dalton Ridenhour, and finishing with Henry Mancini’s “Pink Panther Theme.” They show along the way how styles evolved, how jazz composers were affected by classical music (think Thelonious Monk) and went on to influence the music of Broadway and popular culture (Richard Rodgers).

American Standards are glorious finish to 2022 Cabaret Convention

American Standards are glorious finish to 2022 Cabaret Convention

KT Sullivan, a doyenne of jazz through the Mabel Mercer Foundation she heads, presented the Cabaret Convention’s Great “American Songbook: American Standards,” at the three-day event’s finale at Jazz at Lincoln Center on Oct 28. This thrilling event brought singers from the U.S. and abroad to an annual gathering of cabaret fans. And as they are standards, it’s worth noting who wrote them.

Socialist radical Yip Harburg gets spotlight at NYC Cabaret Convention

Socialist radical Yip Harburg gets spotlight at NYC Cabaret Convention

Yip Harburg (1896-1981), was a socialist song writer born on the Lower East Side of New York, where he was named Isidore Hochberg. He changed that to the “American” Edgar Harburg, which would turn into “Yip” Harburg. Yip stood for Yipsel, the acronym of Young Peoples Socialist League, the youth group of the Socialist Party. How did he know that in some future years, that would label him “un-American”!

Broadway By the Year, 1943, 1951, delights musical theater aficionados

Broadway By the Year, 1943, 1951, delights musical theater aficionados

For 19 years, impresario Scott Siegel has been delving into the past of American musicals to put before theater and cabaret fans the best known and hidden gems of the decades. And also presenting some of the finest performers to them. He picks a couple of years. The years 1943 and 1951 in this show were typically marked by blockbusters and some shows I never knew.

Cabaret Convention 2018 hits very good notes with “The Best of Jerry Herman”

Cabaret Convention 2018 hits very good notes with “The Best of Jerry Herman”

There‘s a difference between cabaret and just a singer on a stage warbling a melody. And there‘s a reason so many good cabaret singers come from Broadway. Cabaret is not just about the words and the music, it‘s about telling a story. Sometimes, it‘s even a mini-musical play. And that is what is good about the Cabaret Convention, in its 29th year, annually four nights in October, at Rose Hall at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

“Songbook Summit” exciting jazz cabaret of Jimmy Van Heusen songs

“Songbook Summit” exciting jazz cabaret of Jimmy Van Heusen songs

I love jazz, I love jazz vocalists, so how could it get better? It does with the Anderson Brothers who add text and video to tell the stories of the composers, lyricists and performers they feature. You are pulled into not just the sounds but their personal and musical lives. In August they appeared at Symphony Space and one week after another they featured Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Hoagy Carmichael and Jimmy Van Heusen. I caught the Van Heusen show. It was a delight.

Cabaret Convention 2017 presents top American jazz and standards singers

Cabaret Convention 2017 presents top American jazz and standards singers

The Cabaret Convention put on by the Mabel Mercer Foundation has for almost three decades brought together some of the best cabaret performers in the country, each of four days presenting as many as 20 singers, some prominent, some new, some doing standards, others jazz, to keep the tradition alive. Dozens appeared over four evenings; these are just my highlights. I notice that most are women. Well, so be it! They had the most pizzazz, the most drama.

Best of New York‘s cabaret singers, new talents and veteran stars, featured at festival

Best of New York‘s cabaret singers, new talents and veteran stars, featured at festival

There were 70 singers telling stories to music, swinging to jazz beats, crooning emotion and trilling high notes at the annual Mabel Mercer Foundation Cabaret Convention. In four days at the Rose Theatre, dedicated by Lincoln Center to jazz, you could hear performers as young as 15 and as old as 88 present stunning new and veteran talents – in fact, the special thing about cabaret is that it has no age limits.

Edinburgh Fringe: Bonita Brisker channels Billie Holiday

Edinburgh Fringe: Bonita Brisker channels Billie Holiday

In a velvet ankle-length gown, white gloves and white fur stole, the signature gardenia over one ear, Bonita Brisker glitters like the rhinestones on her costume. “What a little moonlight will do…” she channels Billie Holiday, her songs, her life. “Greetings FBI” to the government thugs who harassed her. She reminds the audience that she “cut a man for putting hands on me wrong.” And Count Basie fired her. And then, “Them their eyes!” It‘s a masterful performance that brings Billie to life.

Key West: Bobby Nesbitt brings panache and glitter to celebration of Las Vegas icons

Key West: Bobby Nesbitt brings panache and glitter to celebration of Las Vegas icons

Bobby Nesbitt‘s tribute to the cabaret greats of Las Vegas is much richer than any medley of songs from the star singers of the time. His performance at the Tennessee Williams Theatre reprises the iconic tunes of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and more. But he also offers some social history that sets “the Rat Pack” – the name given by actress Lauren Bacall –in an American context. (She said, “You look like a goddam rat pack.”)

Cabaret greats glitter in jazzy accents at Town Hall

Cabaret greats glitter in jazzy accents at Town Hall

Jazzy tunes reached the best notes at the annual New York Cabaret Convention sponsored by the Mabel Mercer Foundation, whose artistic director KT Sullivan is a major cabaret singer herself. This was the 26th, and over four evenings it brought major American singers to Town Hall. There were about 60 performers. I was there the last three nights, October 14-16, 2015, and attempt here to acknowledge the best.

Julie Reyburn mixes kids songs and sophistication at Metropolitan Room

Julie Reyburn mixes kids songs and sophistication at Metropolitan Room

When Julie Reyburn sings, you think you are at a theater stage. Her rich soprano last night entranced an audience at her “Fate is Kind,” a show of mostly kids‘ songs for adults. I liked her charming take on Frank Loesser‘s “The Ugly Duckling.”

I was glad, as it turned out, that not all “kids‘ songs” are for kids, especially when they are “On the Steps of the Palace” from Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim. Reyburn is a tuneful theatrical Sondheim interpreter.

Her performance was happily accompanied by the jazzy piano of music director Mark Janus.

Nathalie Schmidt‘s “Forgotten Lovers” are characters in a comic-dramatic cabaret story

Nathalie Schmidt‘s “Forgotten Lovers” are characters in a comic-dramatic cabaret story

Nathalie Schmidt is a French cabaret singer – and a playwright and screenwriter, theater and film director, artist and actress in plays by Shakespeare, Racine, Sartre and other European classics. A full creative life.

You see a lot of that talent in her cabaret show, Forgotten Lovers, at the Metropolitan Room. Certainly, her acting enriches a partly comic, partly cynical take on life. As a singer, she hits the right high notes, and she often sounds like Piaf. She‘s a personality that the New York cabaret scene needs.

Charlotte Patton‘s “Celebrating Men” impeccable collection of upbeat songs about love

Charlotte Patton‘s “Celebrating Men” impeccable collection of upbeat songs about love

My favorite in Charlotte Patton‘s show at the Metropolitan Room was “Quality Time,” a satirical piece by Dave Frishberg (1996) that fits today, as she tells us about a guy telling his wife that, “We‘re up to our ears in our careers and putting our hearts on hold,” so they need quality time. He says, “I know a small hotel remote and quiet, if they decide to sell my firm could buy it, then we‘d develop it and gentrify it.”
That said, the songs in this charming production are of a piece – not mushy or sad, but upbeat and smart.

“Street Singer” is  dramatic story of French icon Edith Piaf in song and modern dance

“Street Singer” is  dramatic story of French icon Edith Piaf in song and modern dance

The very fine Broadway and cabaret singer Christine Andreas channels Edith Piaf in an elegant, sharp, charming dance production choreographed by Pascal Rioult, a former Martha Graham Dance Company principal dancer.

The space is a cabaret/dinner theater space at the 42West Nightclub. Tables are set around a center runway and look at a proscenium stage. Andreas in gamine hairdo, black glittery silk dress, looks (a bit) and sounds like Piaf, her trills and tremors.

Pico and Chown bring rich vocals and jazz piano to Key West

Pico and Chown bring rich vocals and jazz piano to Key West

A jazzy glorious sound fills the living room of the Harry Truman Little White House, in Key West, where the 33rd president took winter vacations, playing poker with his buddies. It comes from the rich, luscious voice of Miriam Pico and the fine jazz piano of David Chown. A few times a month, cabaret takes over the building built in 1884 where Truman spent some winter weeks and which is now called Truman‘s Little White House. The living room, except for the intimate collection of a few dozen round tables, is at it was then. The cabaret shows that take place there are appropriate, since Truman was a piano player.

“Café Society Swing” is glorious jazz and troubling history

“Café Society Swing” is glorious jazz and troubling history

It‘s 1948, the tenth birthday of Café Society, where great jazz and cabaret in a corner of Greenwich Village clashed with the worst know-nothings of the McCarthy era. But we‘re over that now, so come to this musical memoir to enjoy the delicious sounds of the 30s and 40s. And recall how evil the thought police of that era were. The club became a target of slimy columnists such as Dorothy Kilgallen, who called it a “Moscow-line nightclub.” It was the only place that welcomed whites and blacks, certainly enough to make Mme Kilgallen call it subversive.

Indeed, Barney Josephson was a lefty. So? He put money into integrated housing. He used to joke that the Café was “the wrong place for the right people.” Even Eleanor Roosevelt showed up.

Cabaret artists salute “Singer/Songwriters of the Seventies”

Cabaret artists salute “Singer/Songwriters of the Seventies”

Between the rock and roll of the sixties and the disco of late seventies stood the golden age of the great singer-song writer. Urban Stages, in its sixth season of December cabaret, this year presented twelve days of performances that ranged from the songs of Stephen Sondheim to a tribune to Big Crosby. The performers were major cabaret artists.