Charlie Rosen’s Broadway Big Band

Mark Dundas Wood
In this one-off performance at 54 Below, young artists from New York's musical theatre community teamed up with director Max Friedman, bassist/bandleader Charlie Rosen, and Rosen's large ensemble of musicians (counting Rosen, 18 were listed in the program, though I somehow never managed to count that many together onstage at one time). The show offered songs from...

Amanda McBroom and George Ball

Robert Windeler
Amanda McBroom and George Ball's recent show at 54 Below was titled "Some Enchanted Evening: An Evening of Love Songs for Grownups." Even more importantly, this was a cabaret show performed by grownups. McBroom and Ball had last sung together in a club in New York City in 1969. ("He was a child, I was in...

Carol Fredette

Robert Windeler
Carol Fredette has decided that she is not going to sing any more downbeat songs, at least when it comes to their lyric content. That sweeping decision has eliminated all of the blues and a large swath of country music, at a minimum, from her possible repertoire. But this show at Jazz at Kitano, taken...

Isabel Rose

Robert Windeler
Expensively produced flash-and-trash is often able to find an enthusiastic audience, even at the high end of the cabaret world. This one-night effort proved that anew, and you didn't have to go to Las Vegas to see it. Rose, whose show at 54 Below was in aid of her latest album release, "Trouble in Paradise,"...

Natalie Douglas

Tonya Pinkins
"Hello Dolly," Natalie Douglas’s recent tribute to Dolly Parton at Birdland, provided a memorable cabaret experience. Her vocal instrument is incomparable; she segues easily from a smoky contralto to a pinging, piercing mix that is as rich and resplendent as early Streisand. What makes her especially unique is her sunny disposition. She knows it and...

Teresa Eggertsen-Cooke

Mark Dundas Wood
There's a particular challenge for cabaret performers who are singer-pianists. When they come to the stage and sit down at the instrument, the very configuration can suggest a "piano bar" sort of show. Such singers face the ivories as much as they face the audience. Their hands are primarily occupied with the keyboard and are...

Georga Osborne

Kevin Scott Hall
On opening night of her new show, "back," beloved cabaret singer and comedienne Georga Osborne was greeted like a rock star as she made her way to the stage through a packed room at Don't Tell Mama—she was "back" for her first solo outing in ten years, and fans and well-known cabaret scene-makers hadn't forgotten....

Ira Lee Collings

Kevin Scott Hall
There could hardly be a more appropriate song for Ira Lee Collings to open his show "Off the Charts!" with than "I Want to Be Happy" (Irving Caesar, Vincent Youmans), which he performs with a childlike energy and joy, even inviting his audience to share in his enthusiasm. Now 79, Collings immediately gives the impression...

Louis St. Louis

Robert Windeler
The cabaret act as backers' audition is not a brand new concept. But Louis St. Louis took it to extremes in this outing, with generous selections from five of the shows for which he has written music (and mostly co-written lyrics) that have yet to make it to Broadway—apparently not for lack of trying. Collectively, the...

Mighty Real: A Fabulous Sylvester Musical

Kevin Scott Hall
It is rather surprising that until now nobody has done a stage show or film about the life of Sylvester, a flamboyant African-American singer whose flame burned brightly and memorably during the disco years. (A documentary is apparently in the works.) Years before Boy George, Sylvester was cross-dressing (although he rejected the label "drag queen"),...