Club Review: Sheila Jordan

Gerry Geddes
Sheila Jordan Singer/curator Ben Cassara chose the perfect singer to open his Pangea Hot Summer Night Jazz Series when he chose Sheila Jordan.  There is a special sense of excitement and a bit of awe when one goes to see one of the legends, and still performing at the top of...

CD Review: Rebecca Angel’s “Love Life Choices”

Gerry Geddes
Singer Rebecca Angel’s debut recording, Love Life Choices, is in some ways, the perfect summer album, particularly for Summer 2021.  Her smooth, silky, yet surprisingly resilient voice, coupled with pulsing, insinuating music, is like a cooling breeze on a sweltering day.  In this case, however, that breeze contains embers of the fear, concern and pain of Covid-19. ...

Club Review: Leanne Borghesi in “Borghesi’s Back!”

Betsyann Faiella
Leanne Borghesi’s first major outing since the pandemic, Borghesi's Back!,  landed at Don’t Tell Mama with a big bang and a million belly laughs. This mostly fictitious pandemic memoir/travelogue still allows Borghesi to bare her heart (in character) about missing and loving what she was obviously born to do. She had a busy 2020 planned, with engagements...

Club Review: Bossa Tap Trio

Gerry Geddes
In 1952, the iconic star Fred Astaire recorded a multi-album set of the classic songs he had introduced or featured over the previous decades. Norman Granz, the producer, surrounded the song & dance man with legendary musicians from Jazz at the Philharmonic, with Oscar Peterson on piano. The songs were, of course, immaculately sung, but the...

Ann Kittredge

Penelope Thomas
With her sophisticated presence, the clarity of her voice, and a professional skill set that assured us that "she's got this," Ann Kittredge brought so much to her recent offering at the Green Room 42. Titled Fancy Meeting You Here: An Evening of Ahrens & Flaherty," it showcased repertory from the songwriting duo's recent Broadway...

Marta Sanders and Leanne Borghesi

Mark Dundas Wood
Showbroads—a battling-diva entertainment with Marta Sanders and Leanne Borghesi—appeared late last year at Birdland. Recently, the lively show, under the direction of Nicolas Minas, was repeated at the same venue. The evening proved to be good old-fashioned campy fun. The comic feuding of the two actor-singers never rose to a pitch that seemed especially caustic....

Susan Werner

Gerry Geddes
For the last few decades, Susan Werner has been delighting audiences as a singer, a songwriter, and an instrumentalist. She's continued her string of delightful, witty, warm, and wise songs with her "NOLA project," which, as one might surmise, spawned songs inspired by and in tribute to the historic music center New Orleans. Her recent...

Sally Morgan

Betsyann Faiella
Sally Morgan took the stage at Don't Tell Mama looking great, with a twinkle in her eye that foretold a funny and mischievous streak. She was accompanied by pianist Frank Ponzio (except when she sat at the 88s herself); he played exquisitely throughout. She opened her show, Sally Rides Again, with an original song, "Peace...

Lianne Marie Dobbs

Penelope Thomas
The title of Lianne Marie Dobbs's recent show at The Green Room 42—Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Man…?—is a loaded question. Rather than tackling the question head-on, Dobbs left it open, approaching a few possible angles as she considered female identity, offering a few of her own thoughts along with those of...

Emily Koch

Mark Dundas Wood
Why do we hold on to souvenirs of childhood and adolescence, even when these artifacts are highly embarrassing? Pictures from the junior prom that look like Clearasil commercials, notebooks crammed with first attempts at becoming a haiku master, macaroni sculptures created in day camp that appear to have traveled through a world war or two—these...