Bistro Award recipients Manchester and Bridgewater perform at Manhattan festivities
During the past year, I’ve had the pleasure of serving on the Bistro Awards committee, which honors excellence in New York cabaret. Last night, recipients for the 27th Annual Bistro Awards were honored in Manhattan’s Gotham Comedy Club, where they performed for the assembled crowd. Lifetime Achievement winner Kaye Ballard (whom I interviewed recently for this website) was not on hand, but her good friend, columnist Liz Smith was there, and Ballard was Skyped in from her home in Palm Springs for a brief chat. Lee Roy Reams—who performed with Ballard recently in Texas and California—also got into the conversation….
Bistro Award recipient Kaye Ballard looks back–and forward
The 86-year-old entertainer is planning a new show, to play at Feinstein’s at Loews Regency in New York, on June 17. But before that, on April 23, she will be honored at the 27th Annual Bistro Awards with a Bob Harrington Lifetime Achievement designation. The ceremony, honoring excellence in cabaret, happens at the Gotham Comedy Club in Manhattan (other Bistro recipients this year include Melissa Manchester and Dee Dee Bridgewater). As a member of the Bistro committee, I was elated that Kaye was named 2012’s big winner. And it made me even happier that–as a writer for…
“54 Below”: LuPone will be opener for new cabaret at site of celebrated / notorious disco
Last week I posted about the closing of the Oak Room supper club at the Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan. Now comes the announcement of a new cabaret venue in the city. 54 Below will be located one floor beneath the old Studio 54 nightclub on West 54th Street. The main floor is now a theater space for Roundabout Theatre Company. While the new club—which will open in June—can’t be called a replacement for the toney Oak Room, it definitely sounds as though it will be a high-end venture, seemingly in the same league with Michael Feinstein’s club, Feinstein’s at Loews…
Manhattan’s legendary Oak Room club is All-gone-quin
The Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel in New York City, an elegant and intimate showplace for some of the world’s best cabaret singers, will not re-open once the current renovations to the storied hotel are finished. Playbill.com reports that Gary J. Budge, the general manager of the Algonquin, blamed declining audiences for the decision not to reboot the venue. The room has been an institution for decades and is perhaps best known as the artistic home base for singer Andrea Marcovicci for the past quarter century. Michael Feinstein and Harry Connick Jr. both had early successes there. Other performers…
Rocking Joe’s Pub: When Jeremy Jordan drives, no speed limit applies
Actor Jeremy Jordan is on a career joyride that just keeps accelerating. Jordan’s big starring role as Clyde Barrow in the Broadway musical Bonnie and Clyde is now past tense. But he will take on the Christian Bale role in the upcoming Broadway stage version of the film Newsies. (Jordan played the part when the show was staged at New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse.) Meanwhile, the avid-eyed young performer can be seen in the new musical film Joyful Noise, playing the son of Dolly Parton’s character. In 2009, when I interviewed Jordan as part of a Back Stage article on…
Michael Jackson’s Mom poses with Michael Jackson impersonator
It’s sweet, but it’s kinda…??? Katherine Jackson posed for a photo with William Hall, a Michael Jackson impersonator, following the “Legends in Concert” at Harrah’s Las Vegas on Friday.
Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord Lord! That role is Terri White’s!
In her club act at Don’t Tell Mama this last weekend, the young, full-voiced, and extremely sweet-natured actress/singer Nesha Ward (The Color Purple) talked about future musical-theatre roles that would likely be open to her as an African-American performer. Among the possibilities she mentioned was “Terri White’s role” in Stephen Sondheim’s Follies. Afterward, my companion at the show mentioned how interesting it was that the role of Stella Deems (played by White in the current Broadway production) is now thought of as an African-American character. Certainly that wasn’t always the case. In the original production in 1971 Mary McCarty took…
Jazz vocalist Nicole Henry finds soul, R&B “Embraceable”
Singer Nicole Henry will return to The Metropolitan Room in Manhattan on December 19th with a program that promises to be both eclectic and electric. The singer, whose 2008 album The Very Thought of You went to #7 on the Billboard jazz chart, has expanded beyond the jazz realm with her most recent CD, Embraceable. At the Met Room, Henry will include versions of some of Embraceable’s cuts, which encompass a wide-ranging contemporary pop sound, tinged with R&B, soul, and gospel influences. “Before jazz, I’d sung popular contemporary R&B,” Henry told me over the phone from Miami Beach, which she…
Taking it to Les Boulevards: Jean Brassard pays tribute to Yves Montand in NYC show
Who, these days, remembers Yves Montand? The French singer, actor, and politico (who was, in fact, born in Italy) has been gone now for two decades. And many of those who came of age listening to him sing are likewise departed. In the English-speaking world Montand lives on in his movies—not just his American ones (Let’s Make Love with Marilyn Monroe, My Geisha with Shirley MacLaine, and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever with Barbra Streisand) but also his French classics, including Z, Jean de Florette, and Manon of the Spring. He is also recalled by some moviegoers…
