Raissa Katona Bennett
Kevin Scott Hall
"Another Kind of Light" Feinstein's at Loews Regency – August 21-25 When Raissa Katona Bennett, veteran of Broadway shows and champion of cabaret, enters the elegant Feinstein's at Loews Regency to begin her week-long engagement, she conveys the assurance and warmth of one who is enjoying the occasion. She performs her opening song, "Make Me...
Charlotte Patton
Roy Sander
"Looking for Love in the 21st Century" The Duplex - August 15, 22, Sept. 19 Any number of qualities or factors can induce me to see a performer I'm unfamiliar with—for example, a photograph on a flyer that gives the artist an air of intelligence or wit, or a theme that sounds interesting or intriguing....
Marc Eliot
Mark Dundas Wood
Jazz at Kitano – August 8 Leading off the "About Marc" page on singer-composer Marc Eliot's website is a quotation from the widow of Sammy Davis Jr. She claims that when she listened to Eliot's recording of Burton Lane and Alan Jay Lerner's "Come Back to Me," she thought she was hearing her late husband singing....
Stacie Perlman
Roy Sander
"The Story Underneath" Metropolitan Room - July 10, July 31, August 14 When she competed in last year's MetroStar Talent Challenge, Stacie Perlman made a strong and at times dazzling impression. Relatively new to cabaret, having worked previously mainly in theatre, she combined an uncommonly perceptive and expressive acting ability with her manifest singing talent...
Rebecca Kilgore
Robert Windeler
"The Jazzy Side of Judy Garland" Feinstein's at Loews Regency - July 31 - August 11 This is not your grandmother's Judy Garland. Nor is it intended to be. Rebecca Kilgore, in splendid voice, has created an effective and original take on a largely very familiar songbook for her current show at Feinstein's. As she...
Andrea Wolper
Kevin Scott Hall
Zinc Bar – July 30 There was a bit of old-time magic in the air even before the music started at the plush and dark Zinc Bar, located in the heart of old Greenwich Village. The pleasure of a summer evening stroll down West 3rd Street, filled with the ghosts of past music legends, lent an...
Carla DelVillaggio
Robert Windeler
"Streisand: The Greatest Star" Laurie Beechman Theatre - July 11, 18, 25 If you, like me, long ago grew tired of men in drag lip-synching to Barbra Streisand records and calling that an impersonation, have I got a girl for you. A Real Live Girl. Carla DelVillaggio, an RLG based in Florida, made her New...
Jenifer Lewis
Roy Sander
"Black Don't Crack at 54 Below" 54 Below - July 24 - 28 Transporting me from the airport to my hotel when, in the 1990s, I went to Berlin for the first time, the taxi drove through the Brandenburg Gate. Though the driver couldn't have seemed more blasé about the fact that traffic could once...
Barbara Elena Adamoli
Mark Dundas Wood
Don't Tell Mama – July 10, 11 In her first few numbers at Don't Tell Mama, lyric coloratura soprano Barbara Elena Adamoli didn't make a particularly positive impression. While the Verona, Italy-born singer demonstrated a sweet, sturdy voice that can flare with emotion, she seemed to connect neither with her audience nor with the songs...
The Sensational Josephine Baker
Robert Windeler
Beckett Theatre–Theatre Row - June 26 – September 8 As a singular performer in the famed night clubs of Paris in the 1920s and for decades thereafter, the American-born Josephine Baker certainly deserved the appellation "sensational." But her reputation deserves more than this diffuse and often confusing bio-play, which contains too much music more recently...