[Dixielandjazz] The Cabaret Scene

[Stephen G Barbone]

Not Dixieland, but surely OKOM. Brings back memories of the Cabaret  
scene in NYC in the 40s and 50s and the wonderful music therein.
Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

October 26, 2008 - NY TIMES - by Stephen Holden
Saviors of the American Songbook
WHEN the 19th annual Cabaret Convention begins with the first of four  
concerts at Jazz at Lincoln Center on Wednesday evening, a genre that  
has struggled for years below the mass-media radar will lift its  
collective voice in an annual appeal for attention and respect.

“Please listen,” that voice politely implores. “I am in danger of  
dying of neglect, and I have valuable knowledge gleaned from the  
American songbook and from show business history about love, memory,  
art and time. The magic I can conjure in a romantic cubbyhole where  
the lights are low, the wine flows and loved ones are at hand is like  
no other kind.”

The Rose Theater, the modern auditorium inside Jazz at Lincoln Center  
where the convention — part entertainment gala, part trade show for  
nightclub bookers — takes place, isn’t a candlelit nook, but it must  
suffice. Each evening, starting at 6, roughly a dozen performers (the  
roster changes nightly) will sing two songs each. Karen Akers, Paula  
West, Marilyn Maye, Mary Cleere Haran, Julie Wilson, Barbara Carroll,  
K T Sullivan, Tommy Tune and Barb Jungr are among this year’s most  
eagerly anticipated guests.

Most of the genre’s important male stars — Michael Feinstein, Tom  
Wopat, Jack Jones, Steve Tyrell and Brian Stokes Mitchell, to name  
five — are absent from the roster. But one of its most promising young  
male performers, Tony DeSare, a Sinatra acolyte in his early 30s who  
sings Prince as well as Johnny Mercer, will appear on Friday.

Cabaret venerates maturity more fervently than any other form of  
entertainment. Ms. Maye, Ms. Wilson and Ms. Carroll are all in their  
80s, as are three of the genre’s other godmothers, Barbara Cook,  
Eartha Kitt and Elaine Stritch, and its unofficial godfather, Tony  
Bennett. All might be described as sages who take the long view. All  
are old enough to remember and have participated in the golden age of  
live entertainment that faded with the incursions of rock ’n’ roll and  
television. From the late 1940s through the mid-’60s there were  
several tiers of live entertainment in New York: glamorous hotel  
supper clubs like the Persian Room at the Plaza Hotel and the Empire  
Room at the Waldorf-Astoria, high-end nightclubs like the Blue Angel,  
smaller hole-in-the-wall Midtown jazz clubs , and smaller boîtes and  
piano bars scattered through Manhattan where one could drop in for the  
price of a drink.

As the nightclub world has shrunk, that kind of informality is largely  
a thing of the past. The question also continually nags as to whether  
there is a young generation to carry on the tradition. The few younger  
stars, like Harry Connick Jr., Diana Krall and Michael Bublé, who have  
passed through cabaret and jazz clubs on their way to the national  
spotlight rarely look back.

Besides Mr. DeSare, the genre’s other most promising younger  
performers include the sultry Long Island pop-jazz singer Jane Monheit  
and Maude Maggart, a protégée of Andrea Marcovicci and Michael  
Feinstein. Ms. Maggart, who comes from a Hollywood show-business  
family (she is the older sister of Fiona Apple), sings Judy Collins  
and Joan Baez as well as Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern.

The Cabaret Convention is produced by Donald Smith, executive director  
of the Mabel Mercer Foundation, an organization named after the great  
British-born chanteuse who died in 1984. It reflects the refined taste  
of Mr. Smith,a die-hard champion of the urbane nightclub ethos in  
which the spirits of Porter, Coward, the Gershwin brothers, Ms. Mercer  
and Bobby Short hover over concerts that summon fantasies of a long- 
vanished cafe society.

For all the obstacles Mr. Smith faces, his attitude toward the  
tradition he nurtures is philosophical and surprisingly upbeat. He  
said recently that he was encouraged by an increase in the number of  
cabarets outside New York, which with its proximity to Broadway  
remains the genre’s unchallenged hub.

But while cabaret has high-profile champions in the media, the  
dwindling coverage of cabaret in New York’s local newspapers is a bad  
omen.

“We’ve never had any corporate sponsorship,” Mr. Smith lamented. “And  
we haven’t gotten a nickel from any government arts program.”

Mr. Smith’s concept of cabaret is only one of many in a genre that  
also shades into Broadway, traditional jazz, rock and even world  
music. Because a cabaret is the best place for a theatrically trained  
Broadway performer to step out of a role, it is a natural adjunct to  
the musical theater. Where else but in a nightclub could Betty Buckley  
put aside her signature theater hits and bring her probing Method- 
style interpretations to jazz, rock and country material?

When the convention vacated its original home at Town Hall for Jazz at  
Lincoln Center, a new series, the Broadway Cabaret Festival, jumped  
into the breach. Created by Scott Siegel, who also produces the New  
York Nightlife Awards (the nightclub world’s equivalent of the Tonys),  
the festival, which completed its fourth season on Oct. 19, has become  
a primary showcase for ambitious young Broadway stars to test their  
wings as soloists.

The long-running Lyrics and Lyricists series at the 92nd St. Y and  
Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series also dip heavily into the  
cabaret world.

Some stars, like Mr. Connick, Ms. Krall, John Pizzarelli and Dianne  
Reeves, blur the lines between cabaret and jazz until they are  
virtually the same. But most don’t. Performers in Manhattan supper  
clubs are expected to create conceptually unified shows that follow an  
arc and include witty patter. Jazz musicians merely have to play sets  
that can be made up on the spot; talking is not required. The overlap  
between Manhattan’s high-end jazz clubs and its three major hotel- 
associated supper clubs, the Café Carlyle, Feinstein’s at Loews  
Regency and the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel, is infrequent. And  
instrumental jazz has established almost no footing in cabaret, where  
a charismatic personality matters as much as musical talent.

Race has something to do with it. Even in multicultural New York,  
unspoken divisions persist to this day. Ashford and Simpson have  
triumphed at Feinstein’s at Loews Regency for three years running. But  
other African-American performers, like the great singing actress  
Lillias White, have fared disappointingly in the same club. At the Oak  
Room, Ms. West, an African-American pop-jazz singer, is the only  
performer of color to have established a loyal following.

The only truly multicultural venue in New York, Joe’s Pub at the  
Public Theater, has a high turnover of acts from every corner of  
music. It might more accurately be described as a hip musical  
clearinghouse than as a cabaret.

Many complain about the prices at Manhattan’s supper clubs, of which  
the Café Carlyle is the most expensive. There the cost for two tickets  
plus dinner for two (usually required) can run upwards of $500.  
Comparatively speaking, however, that is not much more than the price  
of dinner for two and good seats at a Broadway musical. Although hotel  
spokesmen, when pressed for details, are vague about the profitability  
of their cabarets, it is generally acknowledged that their profits are  
marginal at best.

The peak cabaret experience is a three-way relationship among singer,  
song (often a standard) and audience in which performers pour their  
life experiences in thematic shows using the American songbook as a  
platform; songs are stations in an autobiographical journey shared  
with the listener.

Cabaret connoisseurs know that a great nightclub show delivers a  
richer artistic experience than that offered by almost any Broadway  
musical, Stephen Sondheim’s excepted. A great example is Jessica  
Molaskey’s version of Billy Joel’s “Summer, Highland Falls.” Her  
rendition transforms lyrics that sounded peevish and awkwardly verbose  
on Mr. Joel’s 1976 album, “Turnstiles,” into an acute psychoanalytic  
dissection of a turbulent relationship that has reached an impasse.

Reinvented as a wistful bossa nova in which Ms. Molaskey’s husband,  
the scintillating jazz guitarist and crooner John Pizzarelli, inserts  
quotations from Antonio Carlos Jobím, “Summer, Highland Falls” makes  
you gasp at its truthfulness about the intractability of clashing  
personalities in a dissolving partnership. The Pizzarelli-Molasky duo,  
whose extended engagement at the Café Carlyle ends this Saturday, are  
as good as it gets in any entertainment medium.

Equally compelling is Ms. Jungr, a 54-year-old Briton with a  
gregarious music-hall personality and formidable acting skills whose  
interpretations of Jacques Brel, Nina Simone and Bob Dylan songs (her  
live version of “Just Like a Woman” can be seen on YouTube) make you  
hear them as though for the first time.

To coincide with the convention, Ms. Jungr, who is there on Saturday,  
and Ms. Maye, who appears on Wednesday, are playing return dates (Nov.  
3 for Ms. Junger, Nov. 1 and 2 for Ms. Maye) at the Metropolitan Room,  
a small club in Chelsea where each recently enjoyed a sold-out  
engagement with cheering audiences.

The two-and-a-half-year-old Metropolitan Room — a former comedy club  
that seats 110, is reasonably priced and doesn’t serve dinner — has  
quickly ascended into New York’s leading showcase for talent ready to  
make the leap into uptown supper clubs or the stage. It is at New  
York’s lower-echelon clubs where professionalism gives way to vanity  
shows in which aspiring stars are expected to bring their friends to  
justify their booking.

But even the most acclaimed cabaret performers must wrestle with the  
hard economic realities of a field in which doing it for love is often  
the only reason to do it. After expenses, a midlevel performer who is  
paid $10,000 a week barely breaks even. The typical cabaret contract  
requires a performer to be exclusive to that club for at least six  
months.

For most performers, the usual avenues of publicity and promotion are  
closed. Morning television shows routinely turn down cabaret singers.  
If a performer comes from television there is a built-in audience, but  
with a caveat. Dixie Carter appeared regularly at the Café Carlyle,  
but when her television show “Designing Women” finished its run, her  
cabaret audience evaporated.

Most performers rely on reviews and word of mouth. Radio is of limited  
help. In New York City the disc jockey and author Jonathan Schwartz is  
the only influential champion of traditional popular music. Erudite  
and passionate, he has single-handedly boosted the careers of the Los  
Angeles pop-jazz singer Tierney Sutton, who appears regularly at  
Birdland, and kept alive the memory of Nancy LaMott, a gifted  
balladeer who died in 1995.

In the shouting, brawling world of mainstream pop, the essential  
qualities of a cabaret performance — intimacy, emotional vulnerability  
and interpretive subtlety — have little place. In many ways cabaret  
embodies artistic values that are the antithesis of those promoted by  
that monstrous star-making machine, “American Idol.” In Simon Cowell’s  
critical lexicon, the words “too cabaret” are a damning indictment.

“American Idol” treats singing as an Olympic-style competitive sport  
in which songs, edited into fragments, no longer tell stories. Their  
remains become heavily amplified exhibitions of stamina and ego by  
performers for whom youth, beauty and novelty matter as much as talent.

For the majority of Americans, live music is now an arena-ready event  
that exalts raw physical energy and the kind of prowess measurable in  
athletic terms. The typical concert is an orgiastic rite of communion  
between the public and celebrity. Demolished to make room for  
coliseums where blood sports rule, the romantic cubbyhole has become  
as anachronistic as the notion of privacy itself.




Steve Barbone

www.barbonestreet.com
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband