The Best Is Yet to Come: The Music of Cy Coleman

Roy Sander
59E59 Theaters  –  May 25 – July 3 That Cy Coleman was one of America's great composers is not up for debate. His contributions to the Broadway stage and his catalogue of individual songs are prodigious, not only in quantity, but also in quality and stylistic variety. His Broadway shows include Sweet Charity, Little Me,...

Liz Rubino

Kevin Scott Hall
"If Only…" The Duplex  –  June 3 In her debut show, "If Only…," Liz Rubino, a theatre actress from Ohio and recent New York University Master's degree recipient, showed a lot of promise for a future in cabaret. She asked a question common to many performers who make their way to The City: "If only...

Bettye LaVette

Elizabeth Ahlfors
"An Evening With Bettye LaVette" Café Carlyle  –  May 24 – June 3 This is a performer who is so riveting and unique, so indefatigable, that after two hours of nonstop singing, Bettye LaVette puts down her mike and sings her encore a cappella, Sinead O'Connor's "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got," defining one...

Ryan O’Connor

Kevin Scott Hall
"Ryan O'Connor Eats His Feelings" Laurie Beechman Theatre  –  May 2, 9, 16, 23 Ryan O'Connor—YouTube sensation, Top Five finalist on Your OWN Show: Oprah's Search for the Next TV Star last winter, friend to stars on both coasts, and a singer and actor in his own right—certainly came to the Laurie Beechman Theatre this...

More Than a Song: The Music That Integrated America

Kevin Scott Hall
The Allen Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center  -  May 17, 18 Frank Stewart for Jazz at Lincoln Center As part of Jazz at Lincoln Center's Jazz & Popular Song series (Wynton Marsalis, Artistic Director; Scott Siegel, Supervising Producer; Michael Feinstein, director and host) Michael Feinstein brings us a live version of his popular PBS...

11 O’Clock Numbers at 11 O’Clock

Mark Dundas Wood
Feinstein's at Loews Regency  –  Thursdays at 11 pm There's a hazard with putting together a show consisting of "11 o'clock numbers"—those songs placed late in the second act of a musical in order to pump up the audience before the final curtain. So many of these songs have an accelerating emotional trajectory that results finally...

Laura Benanti

Mark Dundas Wood
"Let Me Entertain You" Feinstein's at Loews Regency  –  May 1 and 22, 2011 Laura Benanti's legit vocal chops, physical beauty, and radiant stage presence work together to invoke comparisons to elegant early-1960s musical-theatre songstresses. If she'd been born a few decades earlier, Benanti would have competed for Broadway roles with such classy performers as...

Elaine St. George

Roy Sander
"InspiRAYtion: The Musical Legacy of Ray Charles" Metropolitan Room  –  April 27, May 3, 4, 9 Elaine St. George may not have done many shows in the fourteen years since I first saw her sing, but to paraphrase a remark Spencer Tracy made about Katharine Hepburn in Pat and Mike, what she's done has been "cherce"....

Jim Van Slyke

Roy Sander
"The Sedaka Show" Feinstein's at Loews Regency  –  April 4, 11, 18, 25 I first saw Jim Van Slyke's Neil Sedaka show in March 2009, when it was in its infancy. Indeed, as I recall that engagement was the show's maiden voyage, at least in New York waters. Since then, he has performed it any number...

Champagne Pam (Pamela Lewis)

Mark Dundas Wood
"Champagne Pam is…'The Dog Walking Diva!'" Don't Tell Mama  –  April 13, 14, 15 Using a clever packaging strategy, Champagne Pam arrived onstage wearing a leopard-patterned jacket, accented with a flute of bubbly and a large, leopard-patterned bag. From the top of her act, she subliminally suggested the pampered, exotic feline, ready to tease and...