Articles by this Author:
Bistro Bits: A Greeting—Plus, What Makes for Super-Great Cabaret?
As you may have noticed, cabaret singers customarily perform two songs before greeting their audience at the top of a show. Occasionally, though, a performer will break the unwritten rule...
Bistro Bits: This New Memoir Is Not a Drag; A Roundup of Cabaret Confessions
Charles Busch spills it. A cabaret venue can sometimes seem pretty chameleonic. Monday, you'll find a singer performing a Burton Lane tribute. Tuesday you’ll get a comedic sketch show with...
More Songwriters Explain How Their Artistry Has Evolved
A few weeks ago, we shared with you the thoughts of four songwriters associated with cabaret: Amanda McBroom, Michael Holland, Tim Di Pasqua, and Joe Iconis. (Read our earlier feature...
Changing Their Tunes…or Not: Cabaret Songwriters Adapt in a Volatile World
All sorts of people in cabaret circles can put “songwriter” on their résumés: singer-songwriters in the tradition of James Taylor and Joni Mitchell; cabaret artists who long to write songs...
“Does This Song Look Good on Me?”—Four Singers Discuss Their Approaches to Repertoire
It’s one of the central issues that cabaret and jazz performers face throughout their careers: How do you best go about picking material to sing? And that initial query prompts...
“Barbra Streisand: the Music, the Albums, the Singles”—a Conversation with Author Matt Howe
It was Yentl that turned Matt Howe into a Barbra Streisand aficionado. He’d been in high school when A Star Is Born came out in 1976—too young to see an...
Cabaret Setlist: “Let’s Not Talk About Love” – Music and Lyrics by Cole Porter
Repertoire for the Once and Future American Songbook Article #24 in this ongoing series. In 23 installments of Cabaret Setlist, how have we not yet looked at a song by...
“The Real Ambassadors”: New Book Recalls an Anti-Segregation Jazz Musical Starring Louis Armstrong and Carmen McRae
Say, show tune lovers—did you ever hear of The Real Ambassadors, a musical developed by famed jazz pianist Dave Brubeck (“Take Five”) and his wife, Iola, in the late 1950s...
Cabaret Setlist: “Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries” – Music by Ray Henderson, Lyrics by Lew Brown
Repertoire for the Once and Future American Songbook Article #23 in this ongoing series. When times get tough, people look for escape routes, right? Think of those 1930s Warner Bros....
Book Review: In “Shy,” the Late Mary Rodgers Settles Some Musical Scores
Showing up in bookstores and online this week is the posthumously published Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022), written in tandem with the...