[Dixielandjazz] Combining Musical Genres, a new marketing direction?

[Stephen G Barbone]

Below article talks about a singer and her show at the Algonquin  
Hotel's Oak Room in NYC, USA. The program combines musical genres from  
the 1920s to the present. Apparently it is a huge success. Reason for  
the post is that it seems similar to what Sacramento Music festival is  
trying to do in order to attract audience. IMO, smart marketing, which  
will keep Dixieland alive for its fans while attracting a new audience  
to help pay the bills. And who know, perhaps a few of the newbies will  
be attracted to old time music known as OKOM.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

A Harlow for the New Era

by Stephen Holden - NY Times - Sept 1, 2011


Emily Bergl, an incandescent kewpie doll with a bright Betty Boop- 
inflected chirp, a defiant flounce and a sharp comedic edge, took the  
Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel by storm on Tuesday evening. Her  
sensational show, “Kidding on the Square” may have played elsewhere,  
but arriving at the staid Oak Room it felt like a gust of fresh air  
that could knock you off your feet.

Ms. Bergl does everything. She acts songs from the inside out, not  
allowing a phrase to go to waste and always singing from the  
perspective of a character who may or may not be a version of herself.  
She dances wildly, boldly flirts with audience members and removes  
layers of clothing up to her final incarnation as a curvaceous, old  
time show girl. In her funniest bit she offers hilarious instructions  
in pronunciation, based on the old Andrews Sisters hit, “Bei Mir Bist  
Du Schön.” With its canny mixture of vintage pop (“Mad About the Boy,”  
“Ten Cents a Dance”) from around the 1930s and more recent hits by  
Lily Allen and the Scissor Sisters, “Kidding on the Square” vaults  
over the decades to connect a wisecracking Jean Harlow-like tough gal  
with today’s ambitious young aspiring celebrities who know exactly  
what they want and are in a hurry to get it. Quaint courtly love is  
not on the agenda. Fame, wealth and pleasure are.

Although Ms. Bergl, 36, is best known for her role in the movie “The  
Rage: Carrie 2” and for numerous television parts, including Beth  
Young on “Desperate Housewives,” she is a natural stage entertainer  
who suggests a multiple exposure of Carol Burnett, Bette Midler and  
Madonna, without really resembling any of them.

Among the show’s revelations were a version of Roy Orbison’s “Crying,”  
that ripped it off the quasi-operatic pedestal on which Orbison and K.  
D. Lang had placed it and turned it into the hurt, stumbling monologue  
of someone coming to grips with her pain and struggling to maintain  
some composure.

The character singing the June Christy hit “Something Cool” was a  
garrulous predatory barfly mechanically putting the moves on a  
stranger who walks away while she’s babbling. She is left with some  
ruffled feathers and hurt pride. But you sense she has done the same  
tipsy routine many times before.

The show, directed by Sarna Lapine, features the pianist Jonathan  
Mastro, who sings with Ms. Bergl on the Boswell Sisters hit “We Just  
Couldn’t Say Goodbye,” and Ritt Henn on bass and ukulele. Mr. Mastro,  
who was the musical director for David Cromer’s off-Broadway  
production of “Our Town,” makes a zany comic sidekick.

The medley at the center of the show combines Ms. Allen’s “Fear” with  
Madonna’s “Material Girl” into a hard-shelled assertion of  
determination poisoned with anxiety. The narrator of Ms. Allen’s hit  
sarcastically boasts that she is “a weapon of massive consumption” who  
is willing to take off her clothes “ ’cause everyone knows that’s how  
you get famous.” But she also has deep misgivings.

“I don’t know what’s right and what’s real anymore

I don’t know how I’m meant to feel anymore

When do you think it will all become clear?

’Cause I’m being taken over by the fear”

Welcome to the second decade of the 21st century.

The show runs through Sept. 10 at the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel,  
59 West 44th Street, Manhattan; (212) 419-9331.