Category: cabaret

Review: Marilyn Maye

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There is nothing more magical than seeing the marvelous Marilyn Maye in an intimate nightclub. Johnny Mathis, in a birthday message to Marilyn a few years back, said “it’s just you and me now, kid!” Mathis meant that they are the two jazz-pop singers of the ’50s and ’60s still actively performing. Mathis maintains an active tour schedule, as does Maye, and neither has fallen far from the peak of their powers. Maye just did Carnegie Hall!

Back in those halcyon days, Ella Fitzgerald called Maye “the greatest white female singer in the world” (which of course allowed Ella to be the very greatest). I can think of no other singer who possesses Maye’s combination of interpretive ability, rhythmic verve, and vocal range. Maye is a singer worthy of being included in the company of Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn or Blossom Dearie, and her phrasing is the finest I’ve heard in that style from a living female singer. This is a classic act in every sense of the phrase. Maye exquisitely tailors her style of singing to the individual song, smooth for the ballads, swinging for the standards, and truly gritty for the bluesier numbers.

Her new show, “Come Celebrate” is a selection of her favorite songs, curated to address the themes of love, and, tangentially, smiles and spring. She includes one of her most requested songs, “Guess Who I Saw Today”; she said to her fans “you have all heard this something like 12,000 times” but then looked at a couple of fresh-faced queerlings in the front row and teased, “well maybe not you!”

Maye appeared on Johnny Carson’s edition of “The Tonight Show” a total of 76 times, a record not likely ever to be beaten by any other singer with any other host. Her run at 54 Below returns us to “Café Society” or what she likes to call “Paradise Cafes” after a song she does (but not in this set). If you love classic songs sung like they’re meant to be sung, it doesn’t get any better than this. My very highest recommendation.

For tickets, click here.

For more more about Jonathan Warman’s directing works, see jonathanwarman.wordpress.com.

Review: Jackie Hoffman

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This lady is monstrously funny. Jackie Hoffman has named her latest show “It’s Over. Who Has Weed?”, and when she she says “it’s over” she means everything! In the opening song, also called “It’s Over”, she says (I have to paraphrase because it went by so fast): “Before the pandemic the questions were, ‘who do I want to fuck? Who has weed?’ Now it’s: “Oh my god! We’re heading towards civil war! Or is it WW III? We’re all going to die because Earth’s becoming uninhabitable! WHO THE FUCK HAS WEED?!?”

To use the title of one of her previous club acts, the kvetching continues, yes it does indeed. Hoffman’s every last frustration and annoyance provides terrific grist for her comic mill. In most of her previous acts she complained about the state of her career. However, in the last few years she has played a series of recurring roles on hit TV shows, most recently Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies. That show shoots in Vancouver, and she sings a tongue-in cheek tribute to the city.

What Hoffman does kvetch about is her housing in Vancouver, especially in a song named “Beware the Airbnb Booking”. The apartment looked good on the website, but when she got there she found out the neighborhood “is where the term skid row was born!” She states that the area is filled with junkies, “But it’s Canada so they’re polite junkies.” There are also lots of birds in the area but the various species “fight each other like the Jets and Sharks in West Side Story,” which she goes on to hilariously demonstrate.

I’m letting you in on some of the jokes to give you the flavor of the show, but I’m just fine with that, because the laughs are a mile a minute with this one. And even though the first song strikes a note of hopelessness, but at the end she does express reasons to hope. Highly recommended.

For tickets, click here.

For more more about Jonathan Warman’s directing works, see jonathanwarman.wordpress.com.

Review: Justin Vivian Bond

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“Being a cabaret singer is all I wanted out of life. And it’s all I’ve gotten out of life! So, yay me!” So says Justin Vivian Bond. This ambition was hatched at a very young age when her parents took her to see glamorous swing singer Helen O’Connell. Seeing the sequined chanteuse jazzily croon on the stage of the Contemporary Hotel in Orlando, she quite straightforwardly thought “That’s what I want to do!”

This trans legend is among the most unique interpreters of song: she can go from tender vulnerability to smirking irony to howling rage, sometimes in the same song. Her taste is impeccable, and she approaches her selections with the touch of a very careful curator. A curator, that is, who finds what is most explosive in the art they’re presenting, and then promptly detonates it. Justin Vivian Bond is a tower of song – mysterious, imposing, beautiful, powerful.

The title of JVB’s current show “Nose Gays” is apropos of nothing, except maybe of the majestic profile photo above. It’s a bit mellower than usual. She says “I’m just singing songs I want to sing. Just imagine that I’m singing in a foreign language, and attach to them…whatever you want!” The show finds Viv reprising songs from various points in her career, Joni Mitchell’s “Woman of Heart and Mind” from early San Francisco days, Kate Bush’s “Under the Ivy” from her most recent Christmas show, and several more. Her encore is a Patti Smith song (I won’t say which one) which she delivers in a full lioness roar.

One of the best features of all of Bond’s shows is her acidly funny, stream of consciousness, between-song patter. As always Bond is hilariously entertaining, wildly imaginative and vividly expressive. Highly recommended.

For tickets, click here.

For more more about Jonathan Warman’s directing works, see jonathanwarman.wordpress.com.

Review: Alan Cumming and Ari Shapiro

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This show is probably the gayest thing to come to the Cafe Carlyle, a stage that has seen Bobby Short and Isaac Mizrahi cross its boards. The famously lewd and frisky “Emcee” of Cabaret and Club Cumming, and the deep voiced host of NPR’s All Things Considered – on the face of it they seem to be quite the odd couple. But get them onstage singing “Bosom Buddies” from Mame and it quickly all makes sense.

Alan Cumming in his own way is as politically committed as journalist Ari Shapiro, and Shapiro is one hell of a singer in his own right, and once you find out about Shapiro’s Portland clubwear from the 1990s, the similarity comes into sharp focus (embarrassingly it sounds like something I once wore; Ari probably looked better in it).

Also, as they themselves point out, they are both very much in the business (no, the art) of telling compelling stories. And so here we are in a show they call “Och & Oy! A Considered Cabaret” – and yes they do both make jokes and get very serious about their respective Scottish and Jewish heritages. Also part of the joy of the show is their spontaneous interactions which are often hilarious, and just as often thoughtful.

Cumming is easily one of the most charismatic performers in America today, his take on songs, so very fresh, his singing as bold, big and beautiful as can be. A highlight is Alan singing a song Kristin Chenoweth made famous “Tyler the Latte Boy” by way of emphasizing that being married does not preclude outside crushes and flirtation. Cumming’s patter is nothing if not frank – sometimes even filthy – and the show as a whole is very emotionally direct, which makes for an experience that is both intimate and expansive.

Shapiro, for somebody most people think of as quite earnest, turns out to be every bit as naughty as Alan, and funny, and tuneful. He sings the Bette Midler song “Laughing Matters” which details the horrors of the world, and unfortunately (as he points out) is even more topical now than it was when Bette recorded it in 1998. The other side of the song is that, with all that’s going on, indeed laughing does really matter. And as incisive as these two are about so many things, they are both masterful at making us laugh. Highly recommended.

For tickets, click here.

For more more about Jonathan Warman’s directing works, see jonathanwarman.wordpress.com.

Review: John Pizzarelli

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So, my father was a great fan of two genius jazz pianists, George Shearing and Don Shirley. As a kid I would sometimes confuse them, and then my father would say, with the always present twinkle in his eye, “All you need to remember, son, is both their names begin with ‘Shhhh’.” Just listen. And I did. The subject of guitarist/vocalist John Pizzarelli’s latest (and as always brilliant) show is Shearing.

Pizzarelli always scales the heights of cabaret’s jazzier side with amazing musicianship and élan, and among that musical “mountain-climbing” he has in fact been influenced by Shearing, and even did an album with him some time ago. As a matter of fact, not long after, he brought Shearing onstage for an encore with him at the Cafe Carlyle, where he is doing his tribute to George.

John has a straightforward, but still astonishing, sort of virtuosity – his particular genius is in his chordal improvisations, finding hidden musical meanings in the most familiar of standards. Also, as measure of his attention to detail, he replicates Shearing’s tendency to arrange unison runs between guitar, piano and vibraphone, an unique and very elegant sound.

It’s common courtesy in a jazz setting to applaud for a bit after everybody’s solos, and indeed bandleader John frequently points at one of the instrumentalists as if to say “give it up for so-and-so”! More often in this show, though, the onslaught of flashy jazziness is so relentless that you don’t applaud for fear of missing something amazing. Neither jazz nor cabaret gets much better than this.

For tickets, click here.


For more more about Jonathan Warman’s directing works, see jonathanwarman.wordpress.com.

News: The Meeting* returns!!!

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Huzzah! The Meeting of the International Order of Sodomites is back! The great writer, curator, femme and major homosexual Justin Elizabeth Sayre is returning it to Joe’s Pub. I’m not sure what this Sunday’s Meeting is about exactly, but it’s called an “Emergency” Meeting, and Goddess knows there are plenty of emergencies. And The Meeting* is fully back as a monthly phenomenon.

A recent quote from Sayre to pique your curiosity: “Glamour is about diligence, thought and restraint. We live in a time of enormous casualness. The time of the permanently busy, spinning on a wheel of being seen. To be glamorous is to change time and not merely to be seen but known. To make as a craftsmen makes, to curate, to perfect, to live in a world that reflects one’s self instead of being reflected upon.

“By believing and dedicating ourselves to glamour and her behavioral sister Elegance, we say to this greedy, ugly world quivering before us with its fearful blankness in hideously comfortable shoes, ‘No, I will honor my soul and the souls of those around me with beauty, kindness and rigor. I will not sink into the ease of a life prescribed and sold and advertised to me, but ultimately gifting me nothing. I will decide my own fate. I will be free.’”

Fasten your seatbelts…..

For tickets, click here.

To learn about Jonathan Warman’s directing work, see jonathanwarman.wordpress.com.

Review: Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks

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I’ve seen plenty of big bands at Birdland, mostly bluesy brassy blaring groups like Count Basie’s and Lionel Hampton’s, much of whose repertoire dates from 1940 or after. The mid-sized combo The Hot Sardines stays within the era of 1920s and 1930s, but does it with a saucy irreverence. Small big band Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks, though, covers the same era as the Sardines, but with more scrupulous attention to stylistic accuracy. Oh they swing, for sure, but the arrangements are recreated in detail from actual recordings from that time. Think Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington’s very earliest recordings.

Giordano himself plays the bass line on a variety of instruments, including an aluminum standing bass, bass saxophone and tuba. He’s also quite the character, wisecracking all the way – but also being the best kind of “infotainment,” like, say, Mark Nadler, John Pizzarelli or Michael Feinstein. In between numbers, he goes into detail about who recorded what and when, and who did the arrangements. There is also a bit of theatricality to the band’s performance style, as when a phalanx of 4 clarinets swing wildly from side to side in precise unison.

They do requests, and composer Harry Warren figured prominently there, especially in a very “hot” swinging version of “42nd Street”, and Fletcher Handerson’s “Shanghai Shuffle”. There was a request from within the ensemble for Original Dixieland Jass Band’s “Indiana” which was one of the most hard-swinging moments of the night. Highly recommended.

For tickets click here.

To learn about Jonathan Warman’s directing work, see jonathanwarman.wordpress.com.

Review: The Hot Sardines

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This band brought me back to life! I was a bit between blue and – as Blanche says in The Golden Girls – magenta, and The Hot Sardines gave me a solid kick in the ass. They’re on a mission to put the “hot” back into “hot jazz.” Think Louis Armstrong’s legendary Hot Five and Hot Seven combos, with a pinch of the gutbucket grit of swing revivalists like Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. Their repertoire tends to pre-1930 songs, popularized by the likes of Sophie Tucker and Mamie Smith, but they also expand into reinterpreting songs from other eras in that style.

Lead singer Elizabeth Bougerol and pianist / bandleader Evan Palazzo met in 2007 after they both answered a Craigslist ad about a jazz jam session above a Manhattan noodle shop. Palazzo passed her litmus test – he knew Fats Waller’s “Your Feet’s Too Big” and could play it off the top of his head. Since then they have been increasing the size of the ensemble; it’s presently a hot eight-piece. Perhaps most inventively, the band includes a rotating cast of tap dancers, who intentionally play the part of a percussionist more than a dancer.

Bougerol was born in France and injects the occasional French-language vocal into the mix, regardless of whether the song was originally in French or not. This sort of playful irreverence forms a central part of the band’s aesthetic, showing up in Palazzo’s frisky fugue-like intro to “Comes Love,” and in Bougerol’s elaborating on the “single-entendre” metaphors that blues singers used for dirty or “hokum” songs. Highly recommended.

For tickets, click here.

To learn about Jonathan Warman’s directing work, see jonathanwarman.com.

Review: John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey

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This man and wife duo are doing a fabulous new show at the Cafe Carlyle, called “East Side After Dark” perhaps in tribute to Carlyle mainstay Bobby Short’s classic 1960 live album “On The East Side” (which by the way was actually not recorded at the Carlyle). John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey start with “Cheerful Little Earful”, a charmer which was first made famous by Fanny Brice.

After that, the East Side theme to one side, the pair launched into a pair of songs that praise the city more generally, the relatively obscure “When You’re Far Away from New York Town” and the song that made Rodgers and Hart’s names “Manhattan”. John gets all the jokes in the song – which is a loving satire of a bustling, smelly city – and communicates them elegantly to the audience.

The act is intended as a tribute to Upper East Side clubs of yore. The comically named Upstairs at the Downstairs is mentioned several times. There is also a loving tribute to John’s late father, jazz legend Bucky Pizzarelli, who was ironically requested to play “Pick Yourself Up” at a funeral. Jessica gets her own “after dark” spotlight with a mellifluous rendition of Blossom Dearie’s “Moonlight Savings Time”.

The continue the theme with late night cabaret legend Dave Frishberg’s “I’m Hip” which Molaskey puts her own parody lyric spin singing in a second pass, which is all about her recent hip surgery. Pizzarelli then concludes with Rodgers and Hammerstein’s biting take on racism “Carefully Taught”. Upon which Molaskey adds that they will close all of their shows “until it no longer applies” (unfortunately probably not anytime soon). Overall, the singing’s smart, the music’s deftly swung and the atmosphere sparkles. Cabaret doesn’t get much better than this.

For tickets, click here.

To learn about Jonathan Warman’s directing work, see jonathanwarman.wordpress.com.

Review: Marilyn Maye

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Here we have the songs of Johnny Mercer, one of the greatest writers of “The Great American Songbook,” sung by Marilyn Maye, one of greatest interpreters of that Songbook. That sounds like a great combination, doesn’t it? And indeed it is! Many years ago Ella Fitzgerald – who released a Mercer Songbook album in 1964 – called Marilyn Maye “the greatest white female singer in the world.”All these years later Ella’s remark is still no exaggeration.

I can think of no other living singer who possesses Maye’s combination of interpretive ability, rhythmic verve, and vocal range. Maye is a jazz-pop singer worthy of being included in the company of Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn or Blossom Dearie, and her phrasing is the finest I’ve heard in that style from a living singer.

This show – as always is the case with the marvelous Miss Maye – is heavy on the medleys. Here, they’re divided into themes that Mercer liked to write about, such as “Angels,” “Women’s Names,” “Autumn,” “Dream,” and even “Revenge.” Again as always, Maye and her music director Tedd Firth handle medleys with thoughtful storytelling and sophisticated jazz musicianship. Maye exquisitely tailors her singing style to the individual Mercer song, smooth for the ballads, swinging for the up-tempos, and truly gritty for the bluesier numbers. She almost growls for his “Blues In the Night”.

Maye appeared on Johnny Carson’s edition of “The Tonight Show” a total of 76 times, a record not likely ever to be beaten by any other singer with any other host. If you love classic songs like Mercer’s sung like they’re meant to be sung, it just doesn’t get any better than this. Highly Recommended.

For tickets, click here.

For more about Jonathan Warman’s directing work, see jonathanwarman.wordpress.com.