Articles by this Author:
Roseanna Vitro Project
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...
Norm Lewis
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...
Dean Benner
Here's a nice fantasy: the pop musical style known as "western swing" re-emerges as a major phenomenon and somehow brings together opposing camps in American culture: red states and blue,...
Diane Schuur
Early during the second show of her opening night at Birdland, singer-pianist Diane Schuur noted that second sets are good because you never know exactly what's going to happen with...
Bazazz! A Sequined Variety
I'm glad to have lived through the 1960s and 1970s, when prime time TV variety shows—inspired by British music hall and American vaudeville entertainments—were most in vogue. And I'm sorry...
Amy Wolk
The first music we hear in Amy Wolk's new Duplex show is a snippet of the "Love Is All Around" theme from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The singer arrives...
Leslie Carrara-Rudolph
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...
Gabrielle Stravelli
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...
Norbert Leo Butz
As a leading man in musicals, two-time Tony Award recipient Norbert Leo Butz has been very much a creature of his own era. He has appeared in six Broadway musicals...
Ruby Manger Live! The Farewell Engagement
The vanity, self-indulgence and capacity for delusion among show-business divas—male and female alike—have been satirized regularly over the decades. So there is nothing especially boundary-breaking about Julia Mattison's Ruby Manger...