The 26th edition of the New York Cabaret Convention, presented by the Mabel Mercer Foundation, took place October 13-16 at The Town Hall. Robert Windeler, Mark Dundas Wood, and Gerry Geddes covered the four nights for us. Following are their thoughts.

GALA OPENING NIGHT – by Robert Windeler

“Another Op’nin’, Another Show” sang KT Sullivan in a nifty mash-up of that song with “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” And so it was, and so there isn’t. Sullivan, the artistic director of the Mabel Mercer Foundation and hostess for the first night, got the evening off to a rousing start and set the tone for what was to follow. With no overarching theme, the artists who appeared seemed to have, themselves, chosen the material they would sing, providing a welcome variety of selections that also alternated nicely in styles and tempos—perhaps in broader ways than would be possible in evenings devoted to a specific songwriter (or two).

Thus Karen Oberlin contributed two numbers from her recent Elvis Costello show, hardly staples of traditional cabaret, but she made a solid case for pushing those boundaries in her standout performance. Lauren Fox similarly broadened the cabaret songbook with “Wild Horses”; her knockout version of this Rolling Stones song was abetted by ace musicians Jon Weber (piano), Ritt Henn (bass) and Peter Calo (guitar), who frequently backed other and disparate acts throughout the first evening and beyond.

Maxine Linehan went beautifully retro with her moving “Mad About the Boy,” while Christine Andreas doubled down on historic cabaret songs with riveting versions of two Edith Piaf staples in honor of Piaf’s centenary this year: “Milord” (which Andreas sang entirely in French) and “La Vie en Rose.” Rebekah Lowin made us rethink “Auld Lang Syne” as a song about lasting friendship and not just for New Year’s anymore, with huge assists from Calo on vocals, as well as on guitar, virtually making it a duet, and from Mairi Dorman-Phaneuf on cello. (This performance is already on You Tube. Check it out.)

Sidney Myer not only offered one of his delicious old-timey-sounding comic songs, ‘There’s No Ring on Her Finger,” he also delivered the best spoken line of the night, in his trademark deadpan growl: “I have marvelous news; I do NOT have a CD available in the lobby.”

Kristoffer Lowe nicely varied his bifurcated set, first doing a cute and bouncy medley from his current Harry Warren tribute show (“We’re in the Money”/”With Plenty of Money and You”), then switching gears to give us his ravishing rendition of “The Impossible Dream,” like you’ve never heard it before and as if he believed every word. His two numbers were interrupted by Sullivan’s surprise announcement that Lowe had won this year’s Julie Wilson Award.

Less of a surprise (because it had been announced earlier), but equally deserving was Amanda McBroom’s winning this year’s Mabel Mercer Award. After singing two songs herself, she introduced her husband, George Ball, making his Cabaret Convention debut. Ball proceeded to kill with his heartfelt “Old Habits Die Hard,” a song written by McBroom and her longtime collaborator and accompanist Michele Brourman, who played piano for Ball and both McBroom solos, and for the McBroom-led finale of the night.

And what a finale it was! McBroom sang the first verse of her best-known song, “The Rose,” then she was joined by the entire opening night cast, and in the later verses, the knowing audience sang along.

The whole program made a strong argument for having at least one night of future conventions feature artists’ choices of material to sing.

A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY: World War II Songs – by Robert Windeler

Andrea Marcovicci and Jeff Harnar once again proved to be genial co-hosts—as well as savvy co-curators in their selection of artists and songs to forge this splendid evening. The program’s umbrella title, “A Sentimental Journey,” may have been a slight misnomer since the number of people who could have heard the songs when they were introduced (and remember them still) has diminished. But the show’s subtitle, “World War II Songs,” is right on the money, since, with two exceptions, all were written and published or debuted during the war, many of them in movies. This proved to be an especially fertile period for American songwriters and a boon for their listeners, and subsequently for the rest of us. While a few of the songs in the program were patently specific to the War (“G.I. Jive,” performed by Danny Bacher, for example), the majority have long since entered the wider American songbook and cabaret zeitgeist. Appropriately, Harnar and Marcovicci started the proceedings with a mini-duet on a few bars of “I’ve Heard That Song Before.” Marcovicci then underscored that notion by saying, “We can absolutely promise that you will know every single song tonight.”

Celia Berk neatly straddled both sides of the equation. First, her WWII-specific, slyly comic rendition of “They’re Either Too Young or Too Old” lamented the dearth of available men on the home front, with the more eligible ones having all been drafted. Then, her wistful rendition of “I’ll Walk Alone” painted a picture on a broader canvas of any enforced or extended separation. Berk was presented with the 2015 Margaret Whiting Award, by Margaret’s daughter, Debbi Whiting.

Other standout performances included Karen Kohler’s striking “Lili Marlene,” backed by Sean Harkness on guitar; Carole J. Bufford’s fiercely country “Someday (You’ll Want Me to Want You)”; Jennifer Sheehan’s luscious “I’m Old-Fashioned”; and Natalie Douglas in her soulful rendition of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”—plus a duet with Julie Budd on “I’m Beginning to See the Light.” Harnar was presented with this year’s Donald F. Smith Award, and he responded with one of the two ringers, “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen,” which was actually written in Yiddish 1932, and indelibly recorded by the Andrews Sisters, with the English lyrics we all know, in 1937. But he was the co-host; he was entitled. Marcovicci also went outside the parameters a bit with “These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You),” which was written in 1936. But her tear-inducing rendition, seated on a stool for all three verses, was reason enough to forgive her for exercising her prerogative. Marissa Mulder closed off the proceedings with an aptly sentimental “I’ll Be Seeing You.”

Marcovicci and Harnar have adopted the unique practice of having each performer introduce the artist coming up next, a nice touch that helps to move things along and contributes to cast camaraderie. I wish other hosts would follow their lead.

LIFE IS A CABARET: The Songs of Kander & Ebb – by Mark Dundas Wood

Many a Broadway songwriter or songwriting team has come through to deliver show-stopping material when necessary. But during their half-century of musical collaboration, composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb made a specialty of it. They thrived when extolling the magic of show business and were never more at home than when fashioning a song that allowed a star to segue from a throaty growl to a brassy belt.

Plenty of such powerhouse numbers were on hand in the Thursday night installment of the Cabaret Convention. But some calmer musical moments were also included, reminding the crowd that the team was capable of subtlety—that some of the more effective musical-theatre moments are ones that, in Ebb’s words, “come in on tiptoe.”

The evening was hosted by an exuberant Karen Mason, who gave the audience what was perhaps an inevitable opening number for this show: “All That Jazz” from Chicago. Bumping, grinding and throwing limbs upward and outward, she set an apt tone for a salute to the Kander/Ebb canon.

Another performer seemingly born to sing the team’s rabble-rousers is dynamo Robert Creighton, who performed a boisterous, fittingly word-slurred “The Life of the Party” (The Happy Time). He followed with one of the strongest versions of “Mr. Cellophane” I’ve heard (he’d performed the song on Broadway during a stint in the long-running Chicago revival). Creighton brought out stronger flashes of resentful anger in sad sack Amos Hart’s signature song than are generally heard.

Other notable performances in the show’s first half included a quiet yet emphatic turn by Stearns Matthews on “My Own Space” (The Act) and Sally Mayes’s soldiering-on defense of settling for less in “So What?” (Cabaret). But the highlight of Act 1—and, for me, the most memorable performance of the evening—was Sandy Stewart’s stoic-in-the-face-of-heartache rendition of “My Coloring Book,” a song she’d sung on Perry Como’s television program back in 1961. She then performed a lovely “My Own Best Friend” (Chicago) with a delightfully scampering piano accompaniment from her son, Bill Charlap.

One standout in the second act was T. Oliver Reid, performing flamboyantly and winningly on a pair of songs from Kiss of the Spiderwoman. Another was Penny Fuller, who presented a medley from Cabaret and spoke nostalgically about having been a Broadway understudy for the role of Sally Bowles in the original production. (If Fuller sounded as sure-voiced and spirited when singing the musical’s title song in the mid-1960s as she does in the mid-2010s, then theatergoers certainly got their money’s worth back then.)

Closing the program was elegant Marilyn Maye, who—unlike, other performers—was accompanied by a full combo of musicians. It fell to her to put across a pair of Kander and Ebb’s barnburners: “Maybe This Time” (Cabaret, the movie) and “New York, New York” (from the film of the same name). She revved up the crowd as expected, even leading them in a sing-along on the latter number, which is likely the most widely known (and certainly the most widely karaoked) song that the honored team ever wrote.

WHAT I DID FOR/TAKING A CHANCE ON…LOVE: The Music of Vernon Duke & Marvin Hamlisch – by Gerry Geddes

The closing night featured the music of Vernon Duke (Act i) and Marvin Hamlisch (Act 2) in a show awkwardly titled “What I Did for/Taking a Chance on…Love.” These strange musical bedfellows had only one apparent connection, and that was the show’s delightful host, Klea Blackhurst, who had recorded a CD of Duke songs and had appeared in Hamlisch’s final musical, The Nutty Professor. One couldn’t ask for a more charming, well-informed, hilarious mistress of ceremonies. Singing in her trademark, Merman style and handling introductions and biographical bits with the wit and skill of a seasoned stand-up, she was one of the evening’s stand-out performers. I can’t think of the last time I was at one of these evenings when I actually wanted more of the host.

Blackhurst sang a couple of numbers by each composer, opening the proceedings on a jubilant note with “Not a Care in the World” (lyric by John Latouche) which contains one of my favorite lighthearted lyrics: “I’m as gay as a Disney cow.” Pianist Matt Baker followed with a sprightly instrumental of “I’m Gonna Ring the Bell Tonight” (Sammy Cahn), followed by a low-key, swinging vocal of “Taking a Chance on Love” (Ted Fetter, John Latouche). Here, and far too often throughout the evening, lyricists were sadly ignored in the patter surrounding the selections. Singer-pianist Alexis Cole exemplified another unfortunate trend, especially in the Duke portion of the evening, of taking the melodic lines at such a slow and deliberate tempo that it sucked the energy and life out of the songs. This somnambulistic approach to “April in Paris” (E.Y. Harburg) cast Cole, an accomplished vocalist, in an unfortunate light. The same thing happened to another talented performer, Eric Yves Garcia, who sang the classic “What Is There to Say?” (E.Y. Harburg) with his hands firmly behind his back as if he were handcuffed, and at a funereal pace, which undercut the wry, bittersweet lyric and the haunting melody.

For an evening celebrating one of the great songwriters, there was a surprising lack of inspiration in evidence. Most of the performances were lackluster—not bad, and not memorable—just ordinary. What one hopes for at events like this is the extraordinary.  Bringing on Chicago-based jazz vocalist Tammy McCann to sing “Autumn in New York” (one of the rare songs for which Duke contributed both music and lyrics), Blackhurst announced that such a great song requires a “heavy-hitter.” What we got was a lightweight vocal with the trappings of “jazz” but lacking in originality and personality. A couple of performances in the first act rose above this. A fragile, thoughtful version of “Roundabout” (Ogden Nash) by Nancy McCall, taken at a more deliberate pace than usual, worked beautifully. Shawn Ryan, wearing an unfortunate clown suit more suited to Eddie Cantor or Soupy Sales (Ryan is better than this), surprised me with a smooth and sophisticated medley of favorites, including “I Like the Likes of You” (E.Y. Harburg), that conjured the joyous spirit of Fred Astaire.

At a few points during the Marvin Hamlisch portion I was tempted to check my program to make sure that I was not at “The 26th New York Broadway Convention.” Whether by design or happenstance, far too many of the performances were set at audition level. Songs were sung in broad strokes, and so big, so loud, so full of intensity that there was no room to let the audience in, and storytelling was lost. In an evening meant to celebrate the art of cabaret as well as the chosen composers, there was precious little cabaret performed on the Town Hall stage.

Falling victim to this were Eric Michael Gillett, whose two songs from The Sweet Smell of Success (lyrics by Craig Carnelia) were technically impressive but failed to connect on a personal level. They never broke through the fourth wall, and breaking that wall is one of the hallmarks of good cabaret. Here, and elsewhere in the set, Success was referred to as Hamlisch’s masterwork, which makes it even more criminally neglectful that not one mention was made of Carnelia’s contribution. Eva Kantor displayed a solid instrument, but her relentless rendition crushed the humor out of “A Beat Behind” (David Zippel), never allowing the song to breathe or the audience to laugh. The bright talent of Liam Forde got lost in a messy, cut-and-paste medley of songs from They’re Playing Our Song (Carole Bayer Sager) that did not do justice to a terrific score. Marieann Meringolo, singing “The Way We Were” (Marilyn & Alan Bergman), chose to hold and bend notes and concentrate on vocal gymnastics rather than illuminate the lyrics.

The other thing these evenings hope to accomplish, I think, is to showcase cabaret performers old and new for a broader audience. Of every artist I saw that night, the one person I would drop everything to see the next day if she were doing a show was Heather Mac Rae. Her beautifully simple and simply beautiful rendition of “Looking Through the Eyes of Love” (Carole Bayer Sager) will stay with me. The show closed with what was meant to be a stirring version of “What I Did for Love” (Ed Kleban), but it was an empty exercise, despite a herculean effort by singer Carol Woods (backed by a chorus of young people) to “gospel-ize” it. And, again, no mention was made of Kleban, whose words for this anthem are arguably more responsible for its popularity than the melody. It was just one more disappointment in a less than impressive night.