Tag: sophisticated jazz

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: 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: Peter Cincotti

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“Killer On The Keys” is the title song of Peter Cincotti’s upcoming album, and that phrase is an apt description of this wildly talented pianist-singer-songwriter. The first song in his act at the Cafe Carlyle is “Raise the Roof” and that he and his band do time and again. He’s a New Yorker through and through, and has been playing clubs here since he was a high schooler, some 20 years ago. By 18 he was working with legendary producer Phil Ramone on his first album, and getting raves playing the legendary Oak Room cabaret at the Algonquin Hotel.

How I haven’t seen Cincotti before now escapes me, he’s just the kind of jazzy cabaret artist I love – just think John Pizzarelli or Marilyn Maye (search for them on this site if you don’t already know). He’s backed by a very talented band; young for the most part (not for nothing, like he was when he started), save for tenor saxophonist Scott Kreitzer, who’s been working with him since the Oak Room.

It’s not all uptempo ravers, though there is a lot of that. While he does a good number of standards, both of the numbers mentioned above are Cincotti originals, and he is premiering a new one at the Carlyle, from his upcoming album. Called “Ghost of My Father” it details how his father, who died when his career was just taking off, has literally haunted him (mostly in a good way) ever since. A pensive ballad, accompanied only by himself on piano, it is as moving as the rest of the set is rousing.

He covers a great range of styles and material from Nat King Cole’s “Sweet Lorraine” to Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind”; his excellent jazzy version of Lady Gaga’s “Pokerface” – which he himself described as a McCoy Tyner / Herbie Hancock influenced arrangement – truly has to be heard to be believed. Highly recommended.

For tickets, click here.

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

Review: John Pizzarelli

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Pianist Isiah J. Thompson, bassist Mike Karn, guitarist and vocalist John Pizzarelli – this trio attacks with flashy jazziness so relentlessly that you don’t applaud for fear of missing something amazing. Pizzarelli has framed this particular act as “Stage and Screen.” That casts a very wide net, since the vast majority of the Great American Songbook comes from Broadway or movie musicals. It works out to be just another excellent show from the John Pizzarelli Trio, packed with the very jazziest interpretations of standards selected with exquisite taste.

Particularly moving was a instrumental solo from John of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “This Nearly Was Mine” and Sondheim’s “Send In The Clowns”, favorites of his father, guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli. Bucky passed away from COVID in 2020, and John teared up while playing this medley. John plays guitar with amazing fluidity and elegance, with nonpareil mastery of a technique called “guitar harmonics” that produces high notes of extraordinary expressiveness. He mixed harmonics with regular virtuosity for this medley, to beautiful effect.

Then again, Pizzarelli finds many ways to put his own interpretive twist on the songs he performs. He has a particular genius for chordal improvisations, exposing hidden musical meanings in the most familiar of standards. After a stirring yet playful rendition of “Rhode Island is Famous for You” (made famous by Blossom Dearie), John noted that he had done several “list” songs in a row, only to launch into another list song , “I Love Betsy” from Jason Robert Brown’s Broadway show Honeymoon in Vegas (“I like Shake Shack, I like MoMA, and New Jersey’s ripe aroma…Heck, there’s lots of stuff I like, but I love Betsy and she loves me. She likes hockey, no I swear, she likes guys with thinning hair”).

John Pizzarelli embodies cabaret’s jazzier side with astonishing elan and profound musical intelligence. Also, as a singer John is very sensitive to the multiple meanings a good lyric can have, and has an uncanny ability to communicate several at once. Overall, the singing’s smart, the music’s deftly swung and the atmosphere sparkles. Neither jazz nor cabaret gets much better than this. Highly recommended.

For tickets, click here.

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

Review: John Pizzarelli & His Quartet

On By dramaqueennycIn cabaret, review1 Comment

John Pizzarelli always scales the heights of cabaret’s jazzier side with astonishing musicianship and elan. This remains true whether he’s leading a big band or a small combo. His current engagement at Birdland is billed as the John Pizzarelli Quartet, but when John did a head count at the top of the show, he counted five musicians, and then decided to call it “John Pizzarelli and his Quartet.”

Pizzarelli works with a profound musical intelligence. John has a particular genius is in his chordal improvisations, finding hidden musical meanings in the most familiar of standards. Only this evening isn’t about standards in the way most of John’s shows are. Instead Pizzarelli focuses on pop / rock singer /songwriters starting with less well known songs like Van Morrison’s “Tupelo Honey” and Broce Spingteen’s “Tenth Avenue Freezeout” and moving to bigger hits like Steely Dan’s “Rikki Don’t Lose that Number” and Elton John’s “Honky Cat.”

For previous cabaret acts, John had often subtly framed songs “in the style of” a particular jazzman. Here, however, he is commits to doing these pop songs in a jazzy Pizzarelli family style, saying early on that “we’ll play lots of different songs, but they will all sound something like that – and that’s the way we like it!!!”

It’s common courtesy in a jazz setting to applaud for a bit after everbody’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.

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

Review: Clint Holmes and Billy Stritch with The Christian Tamburr Trio

On By dramaqueennycIn cabaret, review2 Comments

Cabaret legend Billy Stritch has teamed with jazz singer Clint Holmes for an act at the Birdland Theater entitled “Straighten Up and Fly Right” which pays tribute to the great Nat “King” Cole. Given this combination of performers, it’s not a surprise that the show is jazzy as heck. Pianist / vibraphonist Christian Tamburr and his trio up the jazz ante further still, at one point leaving Tamburr chuckling “so many notes, so many notes!”

Every arrangement, most of them by Tamburr, are wonderfully complex but leave a lot of room for spontaneity from any or all parties. They open with a swinging version of “Straighten Up and Fly Right” which relies heavily on the marvelous way Stritch and Holmes’s voices blend, especially when they harmonize. They harmonize a lot over the course of the evening, sometimes on an equal footing, sometimes as backup for each other, always to good effect.

Clint Holmes has established himself as a cabaret artist of great intelligence. He has been a Las Vegas performer for decades, but exhibits none of the negative qualities you associate with Vegas. He only has the good Vegas stuff: He is nothing if not sincere and authentic, and possesses a magnetic stage presence and a practiced but subtle showmanship that underlines what’s important in the show without overselling it. Stritch has a lot to do in the show, but Holmes has the lion’s share of solo singing, a wonderful thing, especially in those moments when he has his sensitive way with Cole’s more famous ballads.

Stritch’s part of the evening is more of the infotainment variety of cabaret, which I very much mean as a compliment. He unearths some of Cole’s more obscure numbers, and gives them nuanced, memorable readings. Together, they make very high end cabaret. Highly recommended.

For tickets, click here.

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

Review: Marilyn Maye

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She embraces her audience, she overpowers, she electrifies – Marilyn Maye is like no other singer. At 91, she sings and moves like a singer in their 40s. It might not be an exaggeration to call her the best jazz cabaret singer in the world. She’s certainly the last great performer in that style of her generation, still in astonishingly full command of her vocal powers. And at 54 Below right now, she’s turning her towering talent mostly to showtunes. Lucky us!

Maye has been rediscovered by New York audiences over the last decade or so, and you can feel the ever growing lovefest between fans old and new, which only adds to the fun. But she’s had fans in good places for a long time: Johnny Carson gave her a standing invitation to sing on “The Tonight Show” whenever possible, and she ended up appearing 76 times while Carson was in the chair, a record no singer has broken since!

She’s always included showtunes in her act, so there’s plenty of familiar stuff, especially from Hello Dolly and Mame, shows whose title roles she played in now-legendary regional productions. There are several other medleys, but Maye and her music director Billy Strich handle medleys in an unconventional way, undercutting their potential for corniness with thoughtful storytelling and sophisticated jazz musicianship. If you love show tunes sung in sparkling and surprising ways, it just doesn’t get any better than this.

For tickets, click here.

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

Review: Count Basie Orchestra

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You need a big brassy voice to sing over the Count Basie Orchestra – of its 20+ pieces, over 90% are brass. Carmen Bradford belts the Etta James classic “At Last” with more vigor and bluesiness than I’ve ever heard it done, so she certainly fits the the bill (and gives me Obama nostalgia). Basie’s orchestra powers through its extensive repertoire, dynamic and forceful as ever, even though Count Basie passed in 1983.

This big band has continuously toured (with the shortest of breaks in the early 1950s) for 84 years now. I attribute their longevity and continued popularity to the fact that they are “the band that plays the blues” as their motto goes. A certain bluesiness has never gone out of fashion, being an important part of jazz, rock and hip-hop. They were “rhythm and blues” long before that term existed, and still can’t be beat for rhythm or blues today.

Add to that the fact that they are one of the most musically virtuosic of the traditional big bands around! Their command of volume control, both loud and soft, is astonishing. There’s even a number in their current songlist at Birdland where they put this on gratuitous display. Bandleader Scotty Barnhart gave the signal to bring the volume down, again and again, until you think they couldn’t get any quieter, and then take it down some more. Astonishing.

Though the band is known for the tightness of its ensemble playing, each member of the orchestra is a serious soloist in their own right. For the number “Basie Power” the alto sax section of Dave Glasser and Markus Howell traded solos with an intensity that edged towards bebop. Hot hot hot. Highly recommended.

For tickets, click here.

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

Review: John Pizzarelli

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It’s common courtesy in a jazz setting to applaud for a bit after everybody’s solos, and indeed bandleader John Pizzarelli 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.

It’s always great to see a cabaret performer you’ve seen with smaller combos perform with a big band. Seeing John Pizzarelli with Swing 7 – a seven piece rhythm and brass band – is “too marvelous for words.” He embodies cabaret’s jazzier side with astonishing elan and profound musical intelligence. Especially in the evening’s climax, Duke Ellington’s “C Jam Blues” (otherwise known as “Duke’s Place”) in which John and the band solo with vigor, verve and virtuosity.

John plays guitar with amazing fluidity and elegance, with nonpareil mastery of a technique called “guitar harmonics” that produces high notes of extraordinary expressiveness. Pizzarelli finds many ways to put his own interpretive twist on the songs he performs. He has a particular genius for chordal improvisations, exposing hidden musical meanings in the most familiar of standards.

Also, as a singer John is very sensitive to the multiple meanings a good lyric can have, and has an uncanny ability to communicate several at once. Overall, the singing’s smart, the music’s deftly swung and the atmosphere sparkles. Neither jazz nor cabaret gets much better than this.

For tickets, click here.

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

Review: Ann Hampton Callaway

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Ann Hampton Callaway wrote and sang the theme from the TV hit The Nanny, or as she likes to call it “my accountant’s favorite song.” As you might guess from that swinging tune, she definitely thrives on the jazzier end of cabaret, and that inspired her to craft a loving musical history of the hope and joy jazz brings to the movies. To wit, her latest club act “Jazz Goes to the Movies.” (Ann is also an out lesbian, who gave me the honor of being the journalist to do her “coming out interview” – you can read that here).

Ella Fitzgerald greatly influenced Callaway, so it’s completely natural this show should find Ann mixing Ella’s sumptuous syncopation and scat with Fred Astaire’s crooning (more on that in a moment). On songs Ann herself sang for the movies – “Come Rain or Come Shine” from The Good Shepherd and “The Nearness of You” from Last Holiday – the jazz quotient is through the roof.

As to Astaire, Ann remarks that while some people are “Deadheads” she’s a “Fredhead,” and she interprets several songs that Astaire originated in movies. “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” – an Irving Berlin number Fred sang to Ginger Rogers in Follow the Fleet – receives a very emotional reading. She applies the first line of the song to the present day: “There may be trouble ahead.” But in that connection she takes very seriously the remedy offered by the next couple of lines: “But while there’s music and moonlight and love and romance / Let’s face the music and dance.”

Even more emotional is her Pride-themed take on Rodgers and Hart’s “My Funny Valentine.” Callaway relates that when lyricist Lorenz Hart received this gorgeous and melancholy melody from Rodgers, the closeted Hart looked in the mirror and wrote the words he longed to have some man sing to him. The song moved Callaway (and us) so much, that she had to sing The Nanny theme to lift her own spirits.

She even extends her “movie” theme to the recent remake of A Star is Born. No, she doesn’t sing that song, but she does her own take on “La Vie en Rose” (which Gaga sings in a bar in the film), including Callaway’s own intro – a brief love letter to the city of Paris. Callaway, as always, achieves a kind of jazz-pop perfection, shimmery and rich. Highly recommended.

For tickets, click here.

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