There are just a handful of Christmas songs that I really like, and this is one of my favorites. It was written by Hugh Martin and introduced by Judy Garland in the 1944 film, Meet Me In St. Louis. The effervescent Mark Nadler sung this heartfelt version Sunday at David Kenney’s Everything Old Is New Again—Live Holiday Special, and brought the concert to a rousing close.
David has a weekly program Sundays, 9pm, on WBAI 99.5 FM NYC radio. You can hear the recording of the complete show rebroadcast on David’s show December 25th. The wonderful performers included cabaret stalwarts KT Sullivan, Barbara Fasano and Eric Comstock, Beat Kaestli, Karen Oberlin, Frank Dain (the Cabaret Scenes magazine producer returning to his singing roots!), the awesome Gabrielle Stravelli, and Tex Arnold accompanying on piano.
You can listen to Mark, accompanying himself on piano, singing his soulful version of this Christmas classic, by clicking on the grey triangle above.
At the live broadcast of Everything Old is New Again Live at the Metropolitan Room last Sunday, my heart leapt when I heard music historian David Hadju, author of the new history of popular music, Love For Sale, say that the most highly regarded popular song of all time was “All The Things You Are.” Well, of course, a statement like that is necessarily somewhat arbitrary, but it made me happy because I thought my obsession with that song (see here, here, and here) was strictly an idiosyncratic preference of mine. So it was nice to hear someone else say it.
And if you click on the grey triangle above, you can hear Mr. Hadju’s wife, singer Karen Oberlin, sing her lovely version of the song, complete with introductory verse.
Ms. Oberlin was just one of many fine performers in this second season of David Kenney’s and Frank Dain’s Everything Old Is New Again—Live aired on WBAI 99.5 FM NY. The other strong performers included Alfio, Danny Bacher, Alex Leonard, Luba Mason, Tanya Moberly, T. Oliver Reid, Jacob Storms, and The Starlite Sisters. Definitely worth a visit, it’s the first Sunday of every month.
The verbally dexterous and tuneful Kim Grogg wrapped her pipes around Cole Porter’s witty patter song, “Come to the Supermarket”, with gusto and panache this past week, singing at the Metropolitan Room’s season finale of Everything Old is New Again Live, produced by David Kenney of WBAI radio, and Frank Dain of Cabaret Scenes Magazine.
The show, which also featured the talents of performers Kevin Dozier, Maria Failla, Penny Fuller, Lindsey Holloway, Pucci Amanda Jhones, Hilary Kole, Kristoffer Lowe, Marissa Mulder, Kurt Peterson, Jacob Storms, Eric Sweeney, KT Sullivan and Jacob Keith Watson, will return to the Metropolitan Room in October.
This first season has been a real crash course in great cabaret for listeners like me, a cabaret novice, so thanks, David and Frank and all the wonderful artists who have appeared this season.
Although the first live season has now ended, fear not Everything Old is New Again junkies: David’s radio show will still continue to be heard every Sunday night from 9-11pm on WBAI 99.5 FM, NYC, featuring “The Great American Songbook.”
Click on the gray triangle above to hear Kim Grogg wrestle to the ground Cole Porter’s “Come to the Supermarket.”
The exuberant Mark Nadler wants nothing more than to entertain the pants off his audience, and entertain indeed he does. Nadler’s singing and piano-playing showmanship brought down the house last week at the Metropolitan Room’s Everything Old is New Again Live cabaret event, with his rendition of the Cab Calloway standard.
Each month at Everything Old Is New Again Live, David Kenney and co-producers Frank Dain and Cabaret Scenes Magazine present a cornucopia of delights for their audience. This month, the line-up included not only Mark Nadler, but the awesome talents of Baby Jane Dexter, Jeff Harnar, Terri Klausner, Marieann Meringolo, Kim David Smith, Ty Stephens, and Carol Woods.
Five-time Grammy award nominee jazz vocalist Karrin Allyson does it all: sings, plays classical and jazz piano, interprets the Great American Songbook with her unique musical sensibility, and writes her own songs. With the informal intimacy and spontaneity that David Kenney fosters at his monthly Everything Old Is New Again Live cabaret series, Ms. Allyson decided to alter her planned program in order to sing one of her own songs for the packed house, apropos for the rainy day in NYC.
Each month at Everything Old Is New Again Live—stationed at the elegant Metropolitan Room—Kenney and co-producers Frank Dain and Cabaret Scenes Magazine present a veritable master class of vocal wizardry and interpretation. This month, the enthusiastic audience was treated not only to Karrin Allyson, but also Jim Caruso and Billy Stritch, Eric Comstock and Barbara Fasano, Natalie Douglas, Stacy Sullivan, Gay Marshall, Nick Adams, Erich Bergen, Jonathan Karrant, Dane Vannatter, Ross Patterson, and Jon Weber, experts all at their craft.
David’s show can be heard on Sunday nights from 9-11pm on WBAI 99.5 FM, simulcast on WBAI.org on the Internet. And David’s live cabaret show continues on the first Sunday of each month from the Metropolitan. The next live show will be on Sunday, May 1st. If you’re in the NYC area then, join him for some great entertainment.
Click on the gray triangle above to hear Karrin Allyson’s “Wrap Up Some of That Sunshine.”
Once more, cabaret maestro David Kenney of radio station WBAI’s Everything Old Is New Again hosted a dynamite cabaret, aired live on WBAI from the chic Metropolitan Room in Manhattan. There were so many great acts, it’s hard to pick just one, but I was particularly impressed by jazz and blues vocalist Vivian Reed. She opened Sunday’s show and wowed the audience. Here you can listen to her interpretation of the Duke Ellington classic In A Sentimental Mood. Listening to her voice, I got flashes of Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughn. The Drama Desk Award-winning Ms. Reed is truly extraordinary.
David’s show can be heard on Sunday nights from 9-11pm on WBAI 99.5 FM, simulcast on WBAI.org on the Internet. And David’s live cabaret show continues on the first Sunday of each month from the Metropolitan. The next live show will be on Sunday, April 3rd. If you’re in the NYC area then, join him for some great entertainment.
Click on the gray triangle to hear the soulful Ms. Reed. (Please excuse the technical broadcast hiccup near the end—I just pretend I’m listening to vinyl!)
Listen as musical composer and commentator Rob Kapilow deconstructs Bernstein’s masterpiece, “Tonight,” from West Side Story. Utilizing the revisions of the song from Bernstein’s archives, Kapilow explains, musical phrase by phrase, how the song is constructed, and why it works so well. It’s a fascinating exegesis and all the more wonderful for the heavenly singing of Sally Wilfert and Michael Winther as Maria and Tony.
As the cherry on top, after Kapilow’s close explication, Wilfert and Winther get to sing the song through, uninterrupted.
This enlightening demonstration was just one of several bonuses the audience was treated to at this month’sEverything Old is New Again Live cabaret performance, David Kenney’s monthly fundraiser for radio station WBAI 99.5 FM NYC at The Metropolitan Room. The next live show is March 6th; until then, keep happy by listening to David’s show every Sunday night from 9-11pm, at WBAI.org.
Click on the grey triangle above to hear Kapilow and company.
Last Sunday, David Kenney, of radio station WBAI’s Everything Old Is New Again program, generously kicked off a dynamite cabaret fundraiser series for WBAI at the chic Metropolitan Room in Manhattan. One of the highlights of this recent inaugural effort was Karen Oberlin’s moving rendition of David Hadju’s and Fred Hersch’s touching song, Good Things Happen Slowly.
David’s show can be heard on Sunday nights from 9-11pm on WBAI 99.5 FM, simulcast on WBAI.org on the Internet. And from now on, the first Sunday of each month will be hosted live by David from the Metropolitan. Karen Oberlin’s performance is from the very first of this new series.
Click on the gray triangle to hear Oberlin’s heartfelt interpretation. (Hanky alert!)
Every year the gracious David Kenney, who hosts the WBAI radio program Everything Old is New Again (WBAI 99.5 FM NYC and WBAI.org, Sunday nights, 9-11pm), produces a smashing cabaret fundraiser for the station. Last year, the amazing Liz Callaway sang her version of My Grown-Up Christmas List and knocked it out of the park. You can hear her every-word-counts performance by clicking on the grey triangle above.
And if you want to hear the performances of the wonderful line-up of guests that David has for this year’s fundraiser, including Julie Budd and Mark Nadler, tune into his show this week and next.
At the cabaret show I attended last week, the wonderful Liz Callaway sang a beautiful Christmas wish in her emotion-filled, crystal-clear voice. Here’s the audio clip from that song on that memorable afternoon (click the orange button):
What happens to great American songs of yesteryear? Well, they don’t die, no, they become staples of cabaret society.
For years at radio station WBAI, Dave Kenney has been preserving and propagating, through his weekly radio program Everything Old is New Again, what he calls the “Great American Songbook”: those great songs, that were mainly Broadway bound, from the likes of George and Ira Gershwin, Rogers and Hart, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg, Frank Loesser, Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer, and so on. It’s a tradition that jazz and cabaret singers have elevated to a whole separate art form, distinct from the legitimate theater.
Last week, Kenney produced and hosted a wonderful cabaret benefit for WBAI listeners at the Metropolitan Room, an intimate and comfortable space in which to host such an event. The talent on display was delightful and happy-making. It was a two-hour master class in the Art of Cabaret. The singers were all veterans of the cabaret and Broadway scenes, and it was fun to watch them cheer each other on.
Performers included KT Sullivan and Jeff Harner, Liz Callaway and her sister Anne Hampton Callaway, Karen Oberlin and Steve Ross, Karen Mason and Paul Rolnick, Eric Comstock and Barbara Fasano, Gabrielle Stravelli and Pat O’Leary. All of them excellent, and all accompanied on the piano by the talented Alex Rybeck, who also composed some of the performers’ songs.
You can see and hear vocalist Gabrielle Stravelli in the YouTube clip above, singing “Goody Goody” at a previous performance. She performed the song at the benefit as well, and her interpretation at the benefit was even sharper and wilder. She let loose, scat singing and improvising fearlessly, getting to the vindictive core of the song’s lyric:
“So you met someone who
set you back on your heels,
goody goody!
So you met someone and
now you know how it feels,
goody goody!”
I think anyone who heard that performance will think twice about ever crossing Ms. Stravelli. (Only joking, joking, Stravelli!) Afterwards, she said, “What can I say?–I love singing revenge songs–I’m Sicilian!”
Thanks Dave Kenney and all the terrific performers for providing such a Goody Goody time.
