Django Reinhardt Festival: Starring the Young Lions of Gypsy Jazz

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Birdland  -  June 28 - July 3 For twelve years, November has been Birdland's traditional season for celebrating the jubilant swing of Jean "Django" Reinhardt with jazz musicians from around the world. This summer, Birdland added a second festival, proving that for a jolt of pure joyful music, the spirit and sound of this legendary...

Broadway & Berg: Broadway Show Stoppers and the Theater Songs of Neil Berg

Roy Sander
Feinstein's at Loews Regency  –  Jully 5 - 16 "Broadway & Berg: Broadway Show Stoppers and the Theater Songs of Neil Berg"—yes, it may be a cumbersome title for a show, but it is descriptive. To be even more precise, this revue gives us eleven selections by Neil Berg and five from Broadway—a ratio that...

Richard Holbrook

Elizabeth Ahlfors
"Richard Sings Burton: The Songs of Burton Lane" Feinstein's at Loews Regency  –  June 29 "Richard Sings Burton: The Songs of Burton Lane" has turned into one of those cabaret shows that just won't quit. The amiable Richard Holbrook is one of the hardest working singers in this business, with a creamy tenor voice, crystal-clear...

Dee Dee Bridgewater

Roy Sander
"To Billie With Love: A Celebration of 'Lady Day'" The Town Hall  –  June 24 Dee Dee Bridgewater is the most exciting jazz singer I know. Equally accomplished as a musician, vocalist, actress, and entertainer, she's also the greatest all-round artist I know of performing in the jazz idiom. Not surprising, then, that her recent...

Uptown Express

Kevin Scott Hall
"Gotta Be This or That" Metropolitan Room  -  June 24, 25 From the moment the male quartet Uptown Express took to the Metropolitan Room stage in their matching, fitted, gray sharkskin suits, black shirts and purple ties, there was a sense that one was in for an evening of polished entertainment. Here was a good-looking...

Susan Siegel

Mark Dundas Wood
"Starts & Stops" The Duplex  –  June 5, 12, 19 Among the songs that singing actress Susan Siegel included in her Duplex show was Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields's "It's Not Where You Start" from Seesaw, which begins with the lyrics "It's not where you start, it's where you finish/ It's not how you go,...

Becca Southworth

Kevin Scott Hall
"Add a Dash of Diva" Laurie Beechman Theatre  -  June 7 In her recent debut show, "Add a Dash of Diva," at the Laurie Beechman Theatre, Becca Southworth—who resembles a young and mischievous Blair Brown—took on the formidable task of singing songs associated with her favorite divas from her childhood to the present day. How...

Nicolas King

Roy Sander
Don't Tell Mama  –  June 4 - 7 The first time I heard Nicolas King sing was when I played his CD, "Nineteen"—which, not coincidentally, is his age. I could say that I was quite impressed, but that would be like describing the Empire State Building as rather tall. To use a term I don't...

Lea Salonga

Elizabeth Ahlfors
"Lea Salonga: New York in June" Café Carlyle  –  June 7 - 25 Lea Salonga—who won a Tony and every other award playing Kim in Miss Saigon, who starred as Eponine in Les Miserables and Mei Li in Flower Drum Song—yes, that girl with the radiantly youthful face and glorious voice, has grown up. Now...

Marissa Mulder

Mark Dundas Wood
"Look to Your Heart: The Songs of Jimmy Van Heusen" The Metropolitan Room  –  June 4, 8, 16 Listening to Marissa Mulder, I was reminded of the old Baldwin organ my father had in the 1960s, a model that had a panel of tabs beside the keyboard that you would flip to get different effects:...