[Dixielandjazz] Marissa Mulder

[Stephen G Barbone]

Note the comparison to Blossom Dearie in this article. Nice to hear  
young singers and the Amereican Songbook.


A Little Sweet, a Little Bitter, a Little Broadway

by Stephen Holden - NY Times 3/9/12

Among singers with light, childlike voices, there is a fine line  
separating natural buoyancy from an insufferable cuteness. The  
engagingly sunny cabaret singer Marissa Mulder stayed on the right  
side of that line in her opening-night show at the Metropolitan Room  
on Thursday. Her ingenuousness is real and never cloying.

The winner of the club’s annual MetroStar Talent Challenge last  
August, Ms. Mulder, who comes from Syracuse, has a voice with a bounce  
and a twinkle that recall that much-missed pop-jazz pixie, Blossom  
Dearie, who died three years ago. Unlike Dearie, a minimalist to her  
bones, Ms. Mulder has a Broadway side that reared up now and then. But  
her best singing was quiet and friendly.

In matters of interpretation, Dearie was a stealth bomber who with the  
tiniest inflection could insert a note of scathing sarcasm into a  
performance. Ms. Mulder, whose show, directed by Karen Oberlin, is  
titled “Illusions,” carries no concealed weapons. The candy she hands  
out isn’t laced with strychnine. It’s sweet and tart, like a lemon drop.

Some of the illusions she sang about in a program that began with a  
medley of “Pure Imagination” and “Never Never Land” and ended with  
“Rainbow Connection” had to do with leaving childhood fantasies  
behind. Others were romantic. The toughest lyric belonged to E. Y.  
Harburg, whose cynical observation, “It’s a Barnum & Bailey world,  
just as phony as it can be,” in “It’s Only a Paper Moon” is  
camouflaged by Harold Arlen’s irrepressibly upbeat tune.

A trio led by the pianist Bill Zeffiro, with John Loehrke on bass,  
accompanied Ms. Mulder. Pete Anderson’s rippling reed solos  
underscored the show’s attitude of wised-up playfulness, which was  
distilled in a breezy rendition of “Both Sides Now” that understated  
the song’s disillusionment.

The most touching moment was a bare, unadorned rendition of “Nobody’s  
Heart.” When the lonely narrator of this Rodgers and Hart standard  
sang, “I admire the moon, as a moon, just a moon,” you didn’t think of  
a paper orb sailing over a cardboard sea but of a cold, distant hunk  
of rock.

Marissa Mulder will perform through Saturday at the Metropolitan Room,  
34 West 22nd Street, Flatiron district; (212) 206-0440,  
metropolitanroom.com.

To hear Marissa Mulder, go to her web page at:

http://www.marissamulder.com/listen.html

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband