Creating New Venues
In this depressing period of club closings, it’s heartening to note that some cabaret entertainers are taking matters into their own hands. Consider the case of Cynthia Crane: She’s a well-established jazz singer with five CDs to her credit who has created her own opportunity by making an arrangement to sing every Monday night from 7 to 11pm at a restaurant in the West Village called NYC.
After we heard about this newly minted venue, we stopped in to catch a couple of Crane’s sets. We found ourselves charmed by the informal yet serious approach she took to her performance. She put a sophisticated spin on “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” singing it in both French and English. Mind you, the sophistication was arrived at not by singing in French but by her attention to the lyric. Adding to the stylish mood was Crane’s choice of accompaniment: a jazz guitar played by the talented Andy Brown, who elegantly backed the singer.
Wisely leaning toward well known standards in a restaurant where there was no performance history, Crane served up a delicious versions of two songs by Rodgers & Hart, “Mountain Greenery” and the ever-popular “Manhattan.” Over the course of the evening, Crane displayed a special affinity for the songs of this venerable team, but her calling card is versatility. She scored particularly well with “Fools Rush In,” singing it with the authority of a woman who’s lived and learned. And in Cole Porter’s “I Concentrate on You,” she made us concentrate on her.
Happily, Crane isn’t the only performer who’s finding new places to sing. One of the most promising developments in this regard is cabaret artist Carolyn Montgomery’s foray into singing for the next five Monday nights at 8pm in the Theater at St. Clement’s Church on West 46th Street. That’s a big space and a familiar venue in theater circles. We haven’t seen Montgomery’s show yet, but we hope to catch it soon. If she succeeds in drawing a sizeable audience, it could have an important impact on how this and other Off-Broadway theaters use their dark nights.
Another venue is in the works; we just learned about it at an event called the Andy Anselmo Achievement Awards, which took place on April 28 at Birdland. The awards show was a benefit for the Singers Forum Youth Outreach Program. Anselmo has given lessons to such singers as Liza Minnelli, Mandy Patinkin, Tony Bennett, Eartha Kitt, and many others, famous and otherwise; he is the lightning rod for The Singers Forum, which encourages musical involvement and development for anyone and everyone. Among this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award winners were cabaret artist Julie Wilson, opera star Lucine Amara, and actor Alec Baldwin. During the course of the evening, it was announced that the Singers Forum had purchased a building in Manhattan and will be developing both a theater and a cabaret space there. Drawings of the proposed venues were shown and promises were made that they would be in operation by next year. Let’s hope so!
