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By Kathleen France
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Once again, we invite Kathleen France, singer and blogger, to comment on Metropolitan Room's weekly rounds of the singing competition. It's held each Monday at 7pm. Here is her report from the second night of preliminaries. She is a former competitor herself, and last year, was a MAC nominee for her debut cabaret show.
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By Rob Lester
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OK, follow me, if you will, on a “Six Degrees of Separation” cabaret circular journey. I’m starting this column on a laptop at a club that feels like a fan club, again this Monday, because it’s Iridium Jazz Club, where The Les Paul Trio continues to honor the life and art of the late guitar icon. It’s a continuing jazz tradition there, but I’m supposed to be writing about Cabaret. So, what else is going on “In the Still of the Night” in NYC where “It’s De-Lovely” because “Anything Goes” in cabaret “All Through the Night?” I guess you might be getting the idea from these song titles,
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By Rob Lester
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There’s a meeting for hopeless addicts that happens once a month on 51st Street and Broadway, as those souls who need their fix descend a narrow stair to a dark basement room. Huddling there by the glow of a blue sign, they can be seen shaking and howling with others who share the habit they can’t quit. “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” can be heard in the air, and all commiserate. That habit is attending the blazing musical performances of a dynamo named Terese Genecco and her band whose high-powered act and the happiness conveyed by them creates the desire to have more, more, more and they return, return, return, some staying for the early show and the late show. “Infectious energy” would be putting it mildly – it does get “under your skin,” with the drug of choice being pulse-quickening music.
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By Rob Lester
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I wanted to let our readers get an inside view of the birthing process where a MetroStar is born: the delights, the divas-in-training, the dramas of discovery. Since I’m one of the judges in this every-Monday singing contest at Metropolitan Room, along with fellow reviewer Roy Sander (with guest judges joining us in August, and the audience vote factored in), I have a different kind of role in observing the proceedings, and this regular cabaret column should not be a place for me to state opinions at this point, However, it is an important and interesting event – and I wanted to let readers know more about what goes on in the room, if not in my head.
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By Rob Lester
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In case you are a cabaret fan who has been living in a cave, was kidnapped by aliens who don’t have the word “cabaret” in their vocabulary (but probably know a few Cole Porter and Sondheim songs anyway), or had an extended Rip Van Winkle-like nap for twenty-plus years, it’s time for the MAC Awards this Tuesday. Yes, that annual giving of acknowledgments and hugs to cabaret folks for their work over the last year, as voted by the members of MAC, the Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs, during that awkward slow, dull period between the Bistro Awards and the Tony Awards.
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By Rob Lester
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Preferring to do the late-night cabaret crawl and piano bar prowl, and then being unable to wind up the night and unwind, I therefore prefer to wake up the next day at the crack of noon. But Thursday, I’ll need to be awake in time to get myself over to Barnes & Noble at 66th and Broadway, for the annual in-person announcement of the MAC Award nominees at 1pm.
It’s the same space where many cabaret performers do those free sets to promote their new CDs on Wednesdays at 6 PM. MAC’s President, Lennie Watts, will be there, of course, taking some time off from the Under the Covers cabaret series he masterminded, and has been spending a lot of his time watching its performances at Don’t Tell Mama on West 46 Street.
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By Rob Lester
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Yes, somehow, we have arrived at that point where, incredulously, we look at the calendar and realize that ,what was once a new year, is now actually half over. If your New Year’s Resolution was to see more cabaret, did you keep it or do you keep missing the boat? Well, it’s never too late to get on board; you can make the second half of 2010 a time to “Catch-Up on Cabaret.”
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By Rob Lester
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When is the “cabaret community” like high school? I wondered that when I saw the musical Is There Life After High School? at a cabaret venue: The Duplex, where this highly recommended high school memory lane stroll has more performances April 15, 16, 17. (See review later in this article when you click on “Read more” even if “Read more” sounds like an admonishment from your high school English Lit teacher or school librarian or parents.) Perhaps cabaret is like high school in that it surely “takes all kinds” of people, but what’s important is CLASS and hard work and there’s much to learn. Still, there’s a Drama Club in both high school and cabaret.
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By Rob Lester
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As a member of Bistro Awards Committee, my lips have gotten sore and chapped from being sealed for so long, not revealing the chosen winners. But look for the announcement finally this week! The awards show is Tuesday, April 13, at Gotham Comedy Club on West 23 Street. See www.bistroawards.com for all the juicy details and tickets as they become available, and the news will be here as well. Meanwhile, two ladies you saw as part of last year’s Bistro show are around this week. Catch ‘em while you can: At 6pm this Wednesday, March 9, last year’s Bistro Award winner for Outstanding Vocalist, SUSAN WINTER, appears as part of the ongoing FREE series at Barnes & Noble on Broadway at West 66th Street. She’ll be singing from her first CD, a live recording of her cabaret show Love Rolls On. Well worth the roll, or, rather spin.
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