[Dixielandjazz] How to Succeed in Music Performance

[Stephen G Barbone]

Jonathan Russell is busy these days. With music other than Dixieland.  
Some big time venues like Feinstein's as well as a steady 3 day a week  
gig in a band backing a Play about Fanny Brice.  See below for his  
current May June schedule in NYC..


May 17: Iridium with Phoebe Legere; 51 and Broadway 7PM and 9PM

June 9: The Starving Artist with Giant Cicada; 249 City Island Avenue  
8Pm

June 15: Feinstein's with Giant Cicada; 540 Park Avenue 10:45 PM

June 29: Miles cafe with Giant Cicada; 212 East 57 Street 3rd Floor   
8:30-10:30 PM

PLUS ;  EVERY WEDNESDAY, SATURDAY AND SUNDAY at 2PM he appears in a  
Play.

"One Night With Fanny Brice"   St. Luke's Theater- West 46 street  
between 8th and 9th Ave.

  NY Times Review:

A Funny Girl Strives to Survive By ANDY WEBSTER  April 13, 2011
	
It’s to the credit of the actress Kimberly Faye Greenberg and the  
writer-director-arranger Chip Deffaa — with help from the passing  
decades — that the solo show “One Night With Fanny Brice” ducks the  
formidably long shadow of Barbra Streisand and “Funny Girl,” the 1964  
Broadway musical about Brice, the  vaudevillian, Ziegfeld performer,  
comedian and radio star. (The screen “Funny Girl” generated a sequel,  
“Funny Lady,” and now a 2012 Broadway revival is afoot.)	

But “Funny Girl,” lavishly produced onstage and on screen by Ray  
Stark, Brice’s son-in-law, was a whitewash. “One Night,” at St. Luke’s  
Theater, delves deeper into her story. It helps that its tunes (with  
sprightly contributions by Richard Danley on piano and Jonathan  
Russell on violin) suggest an earthier vision of Brice’s era, as do  
Renee Purdy’s costumes. (Brice died at 59 in 1951.)“One Night,”  
fleetingly framed as a visit by Brice from the afterlife, bounds from  
her childhood in New Jersey to a vaudeville amateur night in Brooklyn,  
where her singing prompted a shower of coins from the audience, to  
tours in burlesque (when it meant satire, not stripping) and her  
discovery by Florenz Ziegfeld. It portrays the young Brice as a  
daddy’s girl, eager to sing for her father (a drunk and a gambler),  
and views her later fraught relationship with the career criminal  
Nicky Arnstein as an extension of that. (Scant attention is paid to  
her other two marriages.)Though she lacks Brice’s wide-eyed cartoon  
countenance and elastic physicality, Ms. Greenberg almost matches her  
in vivacity and vocal range in songs like
“Second Hand Rose.” Brice’s suffering underscores Ms. Greenberg’s  
rendition of “My Man,” the entertainer’s signature hit, a wrenching,  
masochistic torch song that Ziegfeld had imported from France and  
that, translated into English, was widely regarded as a reflection of  
the Brice-Arnstein relationship. But mostly we see a flinty, canny  
survivor whose pain is illuminated only so far.St. Luke’s Theater, 308  
West 46th Street, Clinton.


Steve Barbone

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