Steve Ross Reviews

Current Reviews

photo from The New York Times, September 6, 2007

STEVE ROSS - TO WIT: ROSS ON WRY

New York’s Steve Ross returns to these shores as part of the Great American Songbook in London season at Jermyn Street. His choice is to pluck some of the more quirky, ribald, witty and downright rude numbers from the mythical musical tome. His choices here are admittedly unusual but Ross certainly knows how to entertain. With a vague, almost wandering narrative and a wicked glint in his eye he feeds his audience a rich helping of comic genius from the likes of Flanders and Swann, Coward, Wallowitch and of course, that cornerstone of the songbook, Cole Porter.

Themes ranged from hard-core drugs and guns to how a widow rediscovers her taste for sex when her old husband dies. Quite frankly, Ross’s choices were superb and his delivery as wry as the title of the evening suggests. Particular favourites included A Gnu - incidentally the only number this reviewer knew from the catalogue - Delores Del Rio, Dutch Ecology and The Spider and the Fly. Although Ross obviously adores Coward, giving us a hearty rendition of You’ll Have to Show It to Mother, I am not sure it features as his best work. Playing to a practically full house on opening night, it was evident that Ross has many fans in the UK and after this run he is certain to earn many, many more.

- Paul Vale, The Stage, London, March 10, 2008

THE AMERICAN SONGBOOK IN LONDON: STEVE ROSS

Steve Ross spends his career playing and singing funny songs, when he isn’t singing romantic ditties, but this is the first time he has devoted a complete show to the art of the comic song. Steve and director Duncan Knowles have ransacked the repertoire from the whole of the twentieth-century and come up with a wagonload of wit, a bouquet of barbed ballads, a compilation of comic choruses and a sack-full of salacious chansons to present “Ross on wry”.

As Steve writes: “For a while after I began my professional career, ‘funny’ songs were my stock in trade. I began with some from the music hall, moved through Flanders & Swann and ended up with Cole Porter and Noël Coward. I then discovered revue, novelty and point numbers as well as special material – all of which comprise the source material for this programme.”

Indeed, Michael Flanders & Donald Swann (‘The Gnu’ and ‘Tonga’) and Cole Porter and Noël Coward do take up a large part of Ross’s current excursion. Cole Porter is Ross’s favourite songwriter and he probably performs more of his songs than anything else. The epitome of witty material suits the man, as Steve plies his trade as the sophisticated chanteur and piano-player, he still looks as if he has just arrived from a smart Manhattan hotel lobby or stepped off an ocean liner, circa 1935.

Cole Porter’s ‘list’ songs are just perfect for Steve’s laid-back style of delivery, demonstrated in his handling of Porter’s title song to his 1953 show “Can-Can”. Porter deals in the arcane as well as the mundane and you really need a good education or an entrée into American polite society to get all of his jokes. Another great Porter song is ‘They couldn’t compare to you’ from the 1950 show “Out of this world”, in which Mercury lists all his girlfriends up on Mount Olympus. As Steve says, a lot of the songs are quite salacious because many of them deal with the art or the act of ‘doing it’. There’s a really hilarious song by Stan Daniels in which a Hollywood butler answers a call and has to explain why his master cannot come to the phone – he has sexual appointments with practically every name in the movie world’s celebrity book.

Talking of ‘doing it’ takes us back to Cole Porter and ‘Let’s do it, let’s fall in love’. Steve sings this and also Noël Coward's parody version: “E Allen Poe, ho ho ho, does it / But he does it in verse / H Beecher Stowe does it / But she has to rehearse”. There’s more Coward in ‘Bar on the Piccola Marina’ where Mrs Wentworth-Brewster found a new lease of love life after Mr W-B kicked the bucket. And in Coward’s ’You’ll have to show it to mother’, we never really find out what ‘it’ actually is – but we can always imagine the worst.

The rest of Steve’s programme is made up of rather sweet little songs like Porter’s ‘Tale of the oyster’, Murray Grand’s ‘The spider and the fly’, Milton Ager and Jack Yellen’s ‘Hungry women’ (“I feed ‘em and weep!”), John Wallowitch’s ‘Dutch ecology’, on what it’s like to be a dike in Holland and have a person stick their finger in you, and ‘Teeny tiny lady’, Marshall Barker and David Ross’s very unsettling story about a very small girl indeed: chilling but oddly funny too, and Steve gives it a touch of the macabre. The American Songbook Season host Jeff Harnar does a duet with Steve of Cy Coleman & Michael Stewart’s ‘Turning on’ from the show “I love my wife”, another list song, and Steve ends proceedings with Rodgers & Hart’s ‘At the Roxy Music Hall’ from “I married an angel”.

It’s a delightful evening and in fact one of Steve Ross’s best compilations, the ingredients seasoned with just enough chat about his career and the songs, spicing it up with a few jokes and his own inimitable witticisms, and playing all that marvellous music with his brilliant signature skills as a pianist. And they say cabaret is dead. Not while Steve Ross is around it isn't!

- Michael Darvell, www.classicalsource.com, March 4, 2008

HAPPY RETURNS
review of Good Things Going

When Steve Ross brought his Travels with My Piano program to the Cabaret at Savor series last year, I noted that the intimate Flim Flam Room was possibly the idea venue for him. Debonair, witty and charismatic, Ross established an immediate connection with his audience that was all the more effective when nobody in that audience was more than 20 feet away.

This year he brings his Stephen Sondheim show, Good Things Going, to the Savoy Room, where most of the audience is at least 20 feet away. And yet, on Friday night that immediate connection was there, despite the distancing effect of the Savoy Room's raised stage, the mediocre sound system, and a back injury that was clearly causing him discomfort.

Happily, even with a bad back and a room that makes it impossible for anyone except his bass player (the always-impressive Kim LaCoste) to see his piano playing, Steve Ross is still, in the words of the New York Times, "the Crown Prince of New York cabaret". His traversal of the work of the last of the great Broadway composers is just as polished, graceful and illuminating as you'd expect it to be.

I refer to Sondheim as the last of the great Broadway composers, by the way, because his work represents both the apotheosis and the termination of an art form that spanned most of the 20th century. He took the traditional Broadway musical about as far as it could go (to borrow a lyric from his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein II) and then pushed it over the edge. After Sondheim, composers had to find a new direction - which many of them are doing. But the form will never be quite the same.

Mr. Ross' show inspires such thoughts because it does such a fine job of representing the scope of Sondheim's work. From the early romanticism of "I Must Be Dreaming" (from All the Glitters, which Sondheim wrote at the tender age of 18), to the ambiguous wisdom of "Marry Me a Little" and "Sorry/Grateful" (Company) and the yearning of "Johanna" (from Sweeney Todd, undoubtedly one of the previous century's masterpieces of musical theatre), Mr. Ross filters the light of the composer's genius through is own unique prism, and the results are dazzling.

Mr. Ross delivers all this with his usual panache and, when appropriate, dry wit - some of it musical. Two examples that come immediately to mind: a quick instrumental quote from "Blue Skies" towards the end of "Who Could be Blue" (one of many songs cut from the epic-length Follies) and the musical equivalent of a tap-dance break in "Ah, Paris!" (which was not cut), with Ms. LaCoste's bass playing Fred Astaire.

In its original version, Good Things Going was a typical one-act cabaret show, but at the Savoy two acts are mandatory (due, I presume, to the profits gleaned from the bar), so Steve Ross fans get a bonus in the form of a "greatest hits" medley right after intermission. I was glad to find one of my favorite Noel Coward numbers, "Mrs. Worthington", in there (complete with some extra lyrics that were apparently considered too vulgar to be printed back in 1935, if my copy of the sheet music is any indication), along with his enchanting instrumental tribute to Edith Piaf and favorites by Porter and Berlin.

- Chuck Lavazzi, KDHX-FM, St. Louis, November 1, 2007

In early September, Steve Ross returned to the Hotel Algonqun's Oak Room with his act "Good Thing Going," a tribute to Stephen Sondheim. Ross didn't put a foot wrong during the entire evening. reinventing some of Sondheim's greatest hits in a an elegant, unself-conscious way, never destroying the illusion that he is making it up as he goes along. It was a masterly turn.

- Brian Kellow, Opera News, October, 2007

PENNIES FROM HEAVEN - THE LIFE AND SONGS OF ARTHUR TRACY "THE STREET SINGER"

Ten years ago this week the singer Arthur Tracy (aka “The Street Singer”) died in New York aged 98. He had come a long way in nearly a full century. Born Abba Avron Tracovutsky in the Ukraine, he emigrated to the US at age six with his family who settled in Philadelphia. After graduating in 1917 he studied to be an architect but soon left to take up singing. Moving to New York he appeared in vaudeville and was seen by a talent-scout and given a radio programme. He assumed his sobriquet of “The Street Singer” to avoid embarrassing his family. By the early-thirties he had appeared in a film with Bing Crosby, “The Big Broadcast of 1932”, and went on to make five more. He became a phenomenally successful singer in concerts and on record, selling some six million discs and just as many copies of the sheet music of his songs. He was a ‘bari-tenor’ who specialised in performing a repertoire of popular love songs and ballads of the day, material that would now be considered cheesy. But in 1930s’ America and for five years in Great Britain where he topped the bill at the London Palladium, these were the songs that audiences loved to hear.

His signature song was ‘Marta, rambling rose of the wildwood’ which he sang as he stepped on to the stage, as “The Street Singer” seemingly playing the accordion, an instrument which Tracy never actually learned to play. His material was unashamedly romantic but he sang some of the best popular songs ever written, from Romberg and Hammerstein’s ‘One alone’ and ‘Softly, as in a morning sunrise’ to Duke Ellington’s ‘Solitude’ through the Gershwins, Harry Warren and Al Dubin, Jerome Kern, Dorothy Fields and Otto Harbach to Noel Coward and Kurt Weill. He sang the material in a strong, earnest voice that was obviously very appealing to a lot of people.

Performing the songs here are writer and director Gregory Moore, an opera singer now concentrating on cabaret and concert work. He has a stentorian voice, much like Tracy and he puts across the material with warmth and feeling for the sentiments expressed in these numbers. He shares the singing with pianist and vocalist Steve Ross, an old hand at this sort of material. Far from being “The Street Singer” Steve Ross is more the sleek or chic singer and he puts a different spin on the numbers that is his familiar trademark. The accordion accompaniment by Romano Viazzani provides a neat background to the period in this most charming and civilised of entertainments. It’s not often you have the chance to enjoy these sorts of songs and here they are presented with passion and delight.

Tracy’s main period of popularity was during the 1930s and ’40s but, when Swing came in, his sort of songs went out of fashion. He toured here and in the US but eventually the work dried up and he made his money out of ‘real estate’ instead. However, many years later his 1937 recording of ‘Pennies from heaven’ was used in the 1981 US film of the same name (based on the Dennis Potter play) with Steve Martin and suddenly audiences wanted to know him again. The following year he appeared in cabaret in New York where Steve Ross saw him. Later on Tracy appeared in a Broadway show, “Social Security”, and had a bit part in the film “Crossing Delancey”. When Tracy’s papers were filed at Lincoln Center, Ross was asked if there was a show in his story. The result is two hours of very best kind of musical nostalgia.

- Michael Darvell, www.classicalsource.com, October 4, 2007

PENNIES FROM HEAVEN

Arthur Tracy achieved huge popular acclaim in the early thirties as the Street Singer, a mysterious vocalist of indeterminate origin who wandered the CBS airwaves.

With a strong classical training, his forte was the sentimental ballads such as Danny Boy, Just a Gigolo and the number that became his theme tune, Marta, Rambling Rose of the Wildwood.

Tracy moved to the UK and was an instant hit on these shores recording such classics as Cocktails for Two, Keep the Homefires Burning, If You Were the Only Girl in The World and the immensely popular Pennies From Heaven.

Providing the musical accompaniment and narrative for the evening is internationally acclaimed cabaret performer Steve Ross. Ross makes an engaging and entertaining storyteller, particularly describing the moment when he finally met Tracy in the early eighties. But it is through the piano his fondness for the Street Singer shines through and at a emotional level, September Song struck a deeply poignant chord for a worldwide legend who is now largely forgotten.

This evident affection for Tracy is matched only by singer Gregory Moore whose voice has a distinctive timbre that lends itself perfectly to this style, with particular highlights being The Way You Look Tonight and the Kern/Hammerstein classic, Ol’ Man River. Complimenting this duo is virtuoso accordionist Romano Viazzani. Although often portrayed as a skilled accordionist himself, Tracy never actually learned to play one.

Moore as the author gives us woefully too little information on Tracy himself, with too few facts to link his one successful ballad after another.

- Paul Vale, The Stage, London, October 3, 2007

STEVE ROSS: GOOD THING GOING
at the Oak Room at the Algonquin

Steve Ross opened the fall season at the Oak Room at the Algonquin last week. Another way of putting it is to say that after a long absence from the just-refurbished nitery, Steve Ross is back where he belongs and where he deserves to have a permanent home. Yet another way to put it is to say that with the loss of Bobby Short, Steve Ross is the last apotheosis of the quintessential Manhattan piano man. He’s a throwback to something timeless, although future generations—having moved on—may not see it in that regard and will never know what they’ve missed.

Usually inclined to fete one songwriter (Cole Porter, for instance) or one entertainer (Fred Astaire, for instance), Ross hasn’t fought his inclinations much, presumably to the gratitude of the Algonquin brass. (He hasn’t fought his inclination to wear a tuxedo and a boutonniere, either.) For what can only be termed a triumphant return to a doorstep he first darkened—that’s to say, lightened—in 1981, he’s made it a Stephen Sondheim show and called it Good Thing Going, although he borrows that song title but doesn’t sing the song.

What he does sing are 21 other songs the East Side genius wrote himself or with Richard Rodgers. The Rodgers tunes—“Someone Like You,” “We’re Gonna Be All Right,” and “Take the Moment”—are from Do I Hear a Waltz?, the 1965 Time of the Cuckoo adaptation for which Sondheim has few kind words. Perhaps he’ll be kinder after he hears how lovingly and understandingly Ross does them. Employing his febrile vibrato and strong fingering like the master he is, Ross romps intelligently through some of the most popular Sondheim ditties and some barely known, like the stunning “Sand” from the unproduced movie Singing Out Loud. This is a breathtaking glimpse of a very particular and always-to-be-cherished New York.

- David Finkle, Backstage, September 7, 2007

SONDHEIM SAMPLER, STYLED FOR TUXEDO

In Cairo you find bizarre bazaars,
In London Pip! Pip! You sip tea.
But when it comes to love,
None of the above
Compares, compris?
So if it’s making love
That you’re thinking of,
Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah! Paris!

No, it’s not Cole Porter. But as performed at full gallop by the supremely dapper singer and pianist Steve Ross, “Ah, Paris!” — Stephen Sondheim’s brilliant, often overlooked Porter parody from “Follies” — might as well be. Mr. Ross, who opened the fall cabaret season at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel on Tuesday evening with an all-Sondheim show, “Good Thing Going,” has built his career paying homage to that holy trinity of old-time super-sophisticates: Porter, Noël Coward and Fred Astaire.

For a performer like Mr. Ross, who prefers to keep things light, Mr. Sondheim’s songs pose a challenge. If his lyrics match Porter’s and Coward’s in verbal ingenuity, his wit can only go so far in camouflaging the anxiety, disillusion and the awareness of mortality that seep through so many Sondheim lyrics. Mr. Sondheim takes a certain cruel pleasure in reminding us that inside the skin of the tuxedoed gadfly swooping across the parquet in patent leather shoes is a suffering human being. In the pretty language of “One More Kiss,” the soaring operetta parody from “Follies” that Mr. Ross brings down to earth, “Dreams are a sweet mistake/All dreamers must awake.”

This show goes out of its way to examine the obscure nooks and crannies of Mr. Sondheim’s catalog. It includes some real winners. In addition to “Ah, Paris!” there is “We’re Gonna Be Alright,” a collaboration with Richard Rodgers from the 1965 musical “Do I Hear a Waltz?” about mismatched mates rationalizing their desolate marital futures:

If we can just hang on,
We’ll have compatibility
You mustn’t worry — we’re gonna be alright.
One day the ache is gone.
There’s nothing like senility.

Then there’s “Sand,” from an unproduced 1992 film musical, “Singing Out Loud,” which observes that “Love is just grand/ Until you feel it stinging your eyes.” Among sand’s other treacherous qualities, the song notes, it slips through your fingers, provides no solid footing and gets stuck in your hair.

Now and again Mr. Ross abandons his usual comfort zone to embrace danger, but in his own understated way. In his interpretation of that diva war horse “Losing My Mind,” which invites every shade of high drama, this torch song becomes the partly spoken monologue of a man futilely trying to shake off a nagging obsession. Mr. Ross, accompanied on bass by Brian Cassier, demonstrated that a tear-jerker usually performed by a woman pulling out the emotional stops can be just a wrenching when delivered as the murmur of a man on the brink of a breakdown: that low drama can be as effective as high.

- Stephen Holden, The New York Times Music Review, September 6, 2007

STEVE ROSS: GOOD THING GOING

Steve Ross is best known as a sophisticated, old-school interpreter of composers like Cole Porter, Noel Coward, and George and Ira Gershwin. In fact, there is hardly anyone better at illuminating their work than this erudite and witty performer. But in Good Thing Going, his new show at the Algonquin Hotel's recently renovated Oak Room, Ross has extended his reach to the far more modern Stephen Sondheim, while the Oak Room has also extended its reach to include more tables as well as a more modern lighting system.

It will come as no surprise that Ross excels with Sondheim songs that are genial throwbacks to an earlier musical comedy style like "Ah Paris!" "Buddy's Blues," and "We're Gonna Be All Right." These are songs that come to him as naturally as juggling comes to a clown, and like a clown he knows how to juggle a lyric until he gets a laugh. The actual surprise is that Ross, with a modest piano-man's voice and an otherwise dapper and sly performance style, can so deeply delve into the emotional complexities of songs like "Sorry-Grateful" and "Losing My Mind," by coupling both songs into a moving dramatic arc.

The wise and revelatory coupling of songs is, indeed, the hallmark of this show that Ross debuted in London. Some of the time, Ross sings through both songs, segueing from one into the next with a powerful effect. Such is certainly the case in his opening medley of two songs from Company: "Another Hundred People," which establishes the high potential for despair among all of the hopefuls who come to New York, and "Being Alive," which stresses the equally desperate need for human warmth and connection.

On other occasions, however, he only sings part of a Sondheim song to set up the second; for example, crooning a single verse from "Johanna," to highlight the love of one woman, before quickly opening that sentiment to include a great many more young women with "Pretty Women." While we admit this sort of musical slice and dice can oftentimes work in the masterful hands of a performer like Ross, we're nonetheless of the opinion that if the song is worth singing, it's worth singing all of it.

In any event, some numbers stand alone -- and do so with impressive results. Regardless of his ever-youthful appearance, one wouldn't think that this elder statesman of cabaret would sit behind a piano and sing "Broadway Baby," yet his winsome rendition is one of the many highlights in this winning show. And nothing is more stunning than his piercingly acted version of "Send in the Clowns, with which he closes his act.

You can always count on Ross for sharing a fair share of little known gems, and he does not disappoint when he gives us a song called "I Must be Dreaming" from a show Sondheim wrote when he was in college in 1949 called All That Glitters. The lyric was a bit weak but the melody was lovely, and we are thankful for the opportunity to hear it, just as we are thankful for this lovely show.

- Barbara & Scott Siegel, Theater Mania Music Review, September 5, 2007

GOOD THING GOING: STEVE ROSS SINGS STEPHEN SONDHEIM
Algonquin Hotel's Oak Room

At the Algonquin Hotel's Oak Room, Steve Ross talked of four kinds of love: "I was in love, I am in love, I will be in love… and New York, New York." He then walked to the piano and delivered Stephen Sondheim's own complex interpretation of love, Losing My Mind, a song of stunning emotion. While Ross has been long associated with the arch sophistication of an earlier era, he has always rendered a particularly compelling version of this Follies song, decades removed from Porter, Astaire and Coward, so it is not surprising to feel the contained compassion in his riveting rendition. He reaches a pinnacle of heartbreak with: "You said you loved me, Or were you just being kind?"

Ross does not ignore a sampling of Sondheim's more uptempo tunes like Buddy's Blues, Broadway Baby and Ah, Paris! from Follies, and I've Got You to Lean On from Anyone Can Whistle, but the mood of the evening is thoughtful with interpretive takes on romance. Sondheim's love songs are never merely messages of affection or even obsession. They are intricate and their messages cross ranges of passion.

Steve Ross's arrangements illustrate the Sondheim complications with additional dimensions, like Losing My Mind wrapped inside Sorry-Grateful from Company. The lyrical combining of So Many People (Saturday Night) with the usual operatic, One More Kiss (Follies), highlighted the nostalgia in both songs. With So Little to Be Sure Of and Take the Moment were two wistful segments from two Sondheim shows in the 1960's, Anyone Can Whistle and Do I Hear a Waltz?.

Ross stepped around the piano when he wanted to say some words about Sondheim. His patter was selective and illuminating. Accompanied by the sensitive bass-manship of Brian Cassier, his voice, while not traditionally pretty, is evocative and his musicianship, feeling, and interpretation are at a peak, proven with the plaintive aura of Send in the Clowns (A Little Night Music). He included Sondheim's additional lyrics for Barbra Streisand's Back to Broadway album.

Watching Steve Ross is seeing a master rule his craft. These songs were rendered apart from their shows; they were communicative for the occasion, and the cabaret Steve (Ross) bringing the theatrically enigmatic Steve (Sondheim) into the intimacy of the traditional Oak Room, underscores the versatile creativity of these two talents.

- Elizabeth Ahlfors, Cabaret Scenes, September 4, 2007

NOT A DAY GOES BY

Steve Ross is playing the Oak Room at the Algonquin-need we say more. Yes, he's doing the songs of Stephen Sondheim

When Steve Ross renders a theater song by Stephen Sondheim, it's like hearing it for the first time.

The veteran saloon singer, who has been dubbed the crown prince of cabaret, has opened the season at the hallowed Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel for a limited run through Sept. 15th. A boldly assured pianist with a light, reedy and brittle voice, Ross brings a fresh and insightful new appreciation to Broadway's foremost living composer-lyricist.

The rich expansive program boasts twenty provocative and brightly clever songs that define Sondheim's extraordinary gift for composition. Ross gives a smoothly functional, yet adventurous performance, adding a brief, insightful and witty narrative.

The literature of the Broadway musical can boast no riches more worthy than Being Alive from Company, and Pretty Women from Sweeney Todd and With So Little To Be Sure Of from Anyone Can Whistle. Ross reveals the reverence and the rapture.

From Follies, Sondheim's radiant and irreverent portrait of aging showgirls, Ross summoned the heartbreak of Losing My Mind, the sweet whimsy of Broadway Baby and the joie de vivre of Ah, Paris. And it is doubtful one can find any waltzing poignancy as lovely as One More Kiss.

Skirting some of the composer's more obvious choices, Ross mines the Sondheim legacy, unearthing a few rare gems. There is the plaintive I Must Be Dreaming from All That Glitters Sondheim's experimental college composition that offered an early promise of sound harmonic structure and a sweet ardent flavor. Another distinctive lost treasure is Sand. The song comes from a 1992 unproduced film project, Singing Out Loud.

Following an obvious, but sweetly tempered Send in the Clowns, Ross drafted A Moment with You from Sondheim's first professional musical effort, Saturday Night. The song of sweet dancing simplicity, penned when the composer was twenty-four, later surfaced in the collective revue, Marry Me a Little. The Ross charm governed the repertoire right up to the final glorious note.

Opening night found veteran doyenne Julie Wilson on hand with divas KT Sullivan, Barbara Rosene and the unsinkable Tammy Grimes along with cabaret impresario Donald Smith, who will helm the 18th anniversary of his four day Cabaret Convention at Lincoln Center on Nov. 5.

- Robert L. Daniels, Theater News Online, September, 2007

STEVE ROSS MINES GOLD FROM THE IVORIES AT LE CHAT

The only thing wrong with Steve Ross is that his four-day engagement at Le Chat Noir is already half over. A superb pianist, spellbinding song stylist, self-deprecating wit and the very definition of sophistication, he is a master, world-class cabaret entertainer.

He begins beguilingly with two-song medleys by different composers: Irving Berlin's raffish "Puttin' on the Ritz" and "Steppin' Out with My Baby"; Jule Styne's "Just in Time" and "Time After Time"; the Gershwins' "Nice Work If You Can Get It" and "S'Wonderful." What you notice first is his assured, light tenor and immaculate, clipped diction. Then there are the arrangements -- all his own -- in which he will change tempos several times in a song, playing intricate contrapuntal harmonies against the melody line. This is carefully crafted, cosmopolitan musicianship and a joy to experience. His humor runs along the lines of "These are songs I learned at my mother's knee -- and other low joints" and the occasional, perfectly timed verbal aside.

You'll know most of his repertoire, but in his hands -- literally -- standards are refreshed and one gets a sense of the Champagne fizz a Cole Porter or Noel Coward song had on its initial hearing.

When he goes for emotion, the results are exquisite: "What'll I Do?," "How Deep is the Ocean?," "I Concentrate on You," "In the Still of the Night," "All the Things You Are," "Two for the Road."

There are comic songs so old that they're new again: Eddie Cantor's 1929 "Hungry Women" and Ivor Novello's 1921 "And Her Mother Came, Too," which still gets solid laughs 86 years later.

Ross talk-sings his way into "Don't Put Your Daughter on the Stage, Mrs. Worthington," which, with its sly lyric emphases and pauses, may be funnier than Coward's own version. An instrumental of Coward's "I'll Follow My Secret Heart" is bracketed by sung versions of "Somewhere I'll Find You" and "I'll See You Again." But nothing can top the saga of Mrs. Wentworth Brewster's shameless behavior "In a Bar on the Piccola Marina."

Of course there are Coward's louche lyrics to Porter's "Let's Do It," several Porter standards and his brilliant "The Tale of the Oyster."

Speaking of brilliance, Ross wisely plays, but does not sing, a medley of Edith Piaf songs and does sing Charles Trenet's "Beyond the Sea" and "I Give You Love," in their original French.

- David Cuthbert, The Times-Picayune, July 28, 2007

THE AMERICAN SONGBOOK IN LONDON - Steve Ross Sings Sondheim

Steve Ross confesses he has great respect for Stephen Sondheim's work. "When you sing a Sondheim song, it's a different kind of air that you breathe," he notes, praising the "brilliance of the lyrics and the thought-out beauty of his music with its obscure, poetic images." Ross's performance certainly did Sondheim justice. He managed not only to perform the more romantic love songs with intensity and soul, but also to deliver the fast-paced lyrics of the show songs with ease.

Ross knows when to embellish the songs and when to let them speak for themselves, giving even the well-known Send in the Clowns a fresh perspective, and discovering new meanings to the ambiguous lyrics, including the extra verse penned for Barbara Streisand. His take on Losing My Mind was one of the most moving pieces of the night, and had the audience believing that here was a man who had really lost his mind over losing his love.

He has a nostalgic quality to his voice, reminiscent of Fred Astaire in tone and style, perfect for the way he delivers the songs. His vocal ability is even more impressive when you learn that he started off his career as a pianist. In fact, he has accompanied many great stars including Liza Minnelli in theatrical, post-show, celebrity joints in New York. His dexterity on the piano captivated the Jermyn Street audience. His playing style is seemingly effortless, his shoulders moving occasionally, in time with the music.

After an hour of Sondheim, Ross moved on to numbers from the the American Songbook. This section of the show was more light-hearted and he succeeded in getting the audience involved. At the start of I Can't Give You Anything But Love, the whole audience spontaneously sang along, providing the night's showstopper. In the encore, Ross showed off his considerable pianos skills to full advantage, performing a series of Edith Piaf numbers that were breathtaking - you could almost hear her deep, heavily accented voice fill the room.

- Laoise Davidson, Jewish Chronicle, February 23, 2007

THE AMERICAN SONGBOOK

Steve Ross, Andrea Marcovicci, Maude Maggart, Jeff Harnar

The American Songbook in London is the debut event in what Jeff Harner (producer and performer) calls a 'dream to revitalise the American cabaret tradition in London,' an initiative that shows every sign of success. For the next two weeks the melodies of some of the most eminent American composers like Irving Berlin and Cole Porter will be showcased in style at the delightfully intimate Jermyn St theatre after Andrea Marcovicci and Steve Ross have each played a week's residency. I was lucky enough to catch the latter's presentation of the songs of Stephen Sondheim, the 'Bard of the bittersweet' as Ross aptly describes the musical territory the composer inhabits.

Ross is a veteran cabaret artist having made many appearances in the Oak Room of New York's famous Algonquin hotel and his experience is evident, panache oozing from every pore, his material given that extra boost of being narrated with an engaging, laconic humour. He explains how no-one else quite captures the truth of relationships the way Sondheim does, his innate empathy for emotional ambivalence providing the musical theatre with some of its finest songs as Ross evinces. Famous songs like 'Losing My Mind', 'Being Alive' and 'Send In The Clowns' receive due recognition - all ably accompanied by David Johnson on bass- but there are lesser-known numbers too, the aim being to give a good cross-section of Sondheim's range.

Such an intimate setting, one that's 'bijou', as Ross wryly calls it, is perfectly suited to this type of material, the lyrical impact of Sondheim's incisive songs feeling freshly minted... Ross' consummate professionalism- hopefully echoed by his colleagues - provides a superb way for anyone to unwind after a busy week and one can only hope that the Songbook will be back in town again soon.

- Amanda Hodges, ThreesACrowdOnline.com, London, February 27, 2007

CABARET: STEVE ROSS

Over the years the New York singer-pianist Steve Ross has been indelibly associated with the frothy repartee of Cole Porter. The idea of his devoting an entire programme to Stephen Sondheim seemed unpromising on the face of it, especially for the minority of us who find that the composer’s arch wistfulness works best in carefully administered doses.

What a revelation this show was. After Andrea Marcovicci’s compelling opening residency in the American Songbook in London series, Ross managed to go one better... his immensely thoughtful arrangements ensured that this was much more than a treat for Sondheim completists.

One failsafe test, I suppose, is whether a performer can find any way of making a song as familiar as Send in the Clowns seem freshly minted. There were no doubts on this occasion. In a venue that is small enough to allow the audience to catch the faintest of sighs, Ross’s careworn delivery expressed a rare sense of pathos.

He brought so much conviction to Sorry-Grateful that you almost believed the song was as profound as Sondheim’s admirers claim it to be. The same applied to the urban hustle-bustle of Another Hundred People. As for the delightful love letter to grimy Manhattan in What More Do I Need?, Ross injected just the right note of wide-eyed optimism.

Could he make Broadway Baby sound like his personal property? Absolutely. The debonair Ross conjured an image of Fred Astaire tapping a path down the Great White Way. It made perfect sense for him later to take a detour into a brief sequence of Astaire classics.

- Clive Davis, The Times, London, February 22, 2007

A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC HITS ALL THE RIGHT NOTES

The Jermyn Street Theatre is one of the West End's few cosily intimate venues, hidden in the heart of Theatreland only yards from a tourist-thronged Piccadilly Circus. It is a thoroughly friendly and welcoming theatre and, on the evening I was invited along to see Steve Ross sing Sondheim, it was filled with an audience which was enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the subject and entirely appreciative of the performance from start to finish.

The evening was introduced by Jeff Harner as “Everything’s coming up Ross’s ” and it was. Sondheim is a fascinating composer, his songs - masterpieces of wit and bittersweet love - each telling a story, and Steve Ross’s selection was for me both a mixture of personal favourites and previously undiscovered treasures. His knowledge of, and obvious love for, the composer's work was apparent in every number and his understated singing style, dry wit and personal arrangements, always delightful. Ross intersperses his set with humorous and appropriate anecdotes and we discover that his appreciation for Sondheim stemmed from a preview performance of Company in 1970. How many can claim provenannce of that calibre for their love of Sondheim’s works?

Listening to Steve Ross bring Sondheim’s brilliance to life, on the small stage shrouded in heavy red velvet drapes, behind his Steinway, accompanied only by David Johnson on Bass, felt completely appropriate and made a thoroughly spellbinding evening. Exactly what Sondheim cabaret should be.

- Geoff Ambler, ReviewsGate.com, London, February 16, 2007

THE AMERICAN SONGBOOK IN LONDON - STEVE ROSS SINGS STEPHEN SONDHEIM

The second week in the season of “The American Songbook in London” has singer-pianist Steve Ross featuring the music and lyrics of Stephen Sondheim, indisputably the greatest living American writer of music theatre. Although his main interest has always been working in theatre, he is one of very few people to have won an Academy Award, many Tony Awards, countless Grammys and a Pulitzer Prize.

Around the time of his parents’ divorce, aged ten, he happened to befriend Jimmy Hammerstein, son of legendary Broadway lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II. It is due to Hammerstein acting as surrogate father and mentor in all things musical-theatre that Sondheim is where he is today. In his range of material he has arguably surpassed the work of his mentor, although in the field of popular hit songs that became classics, Hammerstein has the edge. Oscar did after all write the lyrics for ‘When I Grow To Old to Dream’, ‘I Won’t Dance’, ‘The Folks Who Live on the Hill’ ‘The Last Time I Saw Paris’ plus Sigmund Romberg’s “The Desert Song”, most of Jerome Kern’s “Show Boat” and, with Richard Rodgers, “Oklahoma!”, “Carousel”, “South Pacific”, “The King and I” and “The Sound of Music”, among others.

Sondheim, however, has one up on Hammerstein. Apart from contributing just the lyrics to three major shows, “West Side Story”, “Gypsy” and “Do I Hear a Waltz?”, Sondheim has been his own composer and lyricist and produced some of the most complex music theatre songs imaginable.

It is just this flavour that Steve Ross brings out in his Jermyn Street show. Ross is a seasoned cabaret artist well-known to New Yorkers from his engagements at the Algonquin Hotel, and to London audiences from his appearances at The Ritz and Pizza on the Park over the last quarter century.

Although he has often included Sondheim songs in his act, this is the first time he has attempted a complete Sondheim tribute. There is nobody better qualified than Ross is to present the work of Sondheim. His musical taste, like that of Sondheim, is impeccable and he presents the material not as it was written for the stage but in expert arrangements performed with his signature vocal timbre that adds another level of enjoyment to this already outstanding musical output.

Ross dates his appreciation of Sondheim from seeing a run-through of “Company” in 1970, a show that has 15 perfect numbers with no song that does not earn its place, but then this can be said of most of Sondheim’s shows. Think of “Sweeney Todd”, Sondheim’s most accomplished theatre piece with about two dozen numbers and none is superfluous or out of place. From “Company” Ross essays ‘Another Hundred People’ and ‘Sorry/Grateful’, two songs imbued (as much of Sondheim is) with a mixture of happiness and sadness, because nothing is easy in his world and everything is shot through with irony. From “Sweeney Todd” Ross sings ‘Pretty Women’ and ‘Johanna’, again bringing out the incipient sadness of what are essentially expressions of love. Even ‘Buddy’s Blues’ from “Follies” is, yes, a love song, but not as we know it.

Sondheim’s biggest hit number that everybody and his wife has recorded and one that Sondheim wrote overnight for the show’s star, Glynis Johns, is ‘Send in the Clowns’ from “A Little Night Music”. Here Ross includes the extra lyrics that Sondheim wrote for Barbra Streisand’s Broadway album and convinces us that this is exactly what the song needs – something to expand or explain the emotions depicted. On the other hand he also includes some of the less well-known numbers from less successful shows, such as “Do I Hear a Waltz?” and “Anyone Can Whistle”. It’s a stunningly well put together show, a template for others of this ilk, a sort of “Side By Side By Sondheim” but without most of the chat, just the occasional link to make the piece appear seamless.

Host Jeff Harnar introduces Steve and joins him for a few duets, too, accompanied by David Johnson on bass in a show that deserves a much longer run. Steve ends the show with a selection of his favourite songs by Cole Porter and others, and also demonstrates his excellent pianistic skills in a medley of Edith Piaf songs. A great evening indeed.

- Michael Darvell, ClassicalSource.com, London, February 13, 2007

STEVE ROSS AT THE CABARET AT SAVOR

Although the intimate, gem-like Flim Flam Room at Savor restaurant isn't large enough to contain a stage, Steve Ross is presenting theatre in its purest sense. The theme here is travel, and his selection of material is impeccable: Noel Coward, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter. Because Ross is a servant to the lyric, songs from lesser-known shows like Sail Away and Carnival receive a new lease on life, while already popular tunes from musicals like Can-Can sound so fresh, it's as if you've never heard them before. For New Yorker Ross, this return to St. Louis is probably just another out-of-town gig. But for the viewer, to see a one-man show of this caliber is to witness the essence of simplicity raised to an artful level not soon to be forgotten.

- Dennis Brown, Riverfront Times, St. Louis, November 2, 2006

TRAVELS WITH MY PIANO

The late Mabel Mercer is generally regarded as a seminal figure in the art form now known as cabaret - so much so that the annual Cabaret Convention in New York now has as award named after her. Last month the second annual Mabel Award went to Steve Ross, in recognition of “his four decades of style, taste, flair and communicative power as the American troubadour”.

None of that will come as a surprise to local audiences. Ross has been a regular here, both at the Grand Center Cabaret series and now in a new concert series at the Savor Restaurant in the Central West End. Set in the intimate Flim-Flam Room, which seats around 60, the Savor cabaret series offers what may the ideal venue for Ross. Debonair, witty and charismatic, Ross establishes an immediate connection with his audience that's all the more effective when nobody in that audience is more than 20 feet away.

Ross is an international traveler with a particular fondness for Paris and London, so it's only appropriate that Travels With My Piano focuses on those two cities as well as on his home base of New York. As a result, the evening includes a lot of familiar material, including Cole Porter's “I Love Paris”, “C'est Magnifique”, “You Don't Know Paree” and, happily, the endlessly inventive lyrics of “Can-Can”; Gershwin's “Foggy Day”; and Noel Coward's two great urban anthems, “London Pride” and “I Happen to Like New York”.

Ross is a man of eclectic tastes, however, so you also get Coward's delightful “Why Do the Wrong People Travel” and inspirational “Sail Away” (both from his 1961 show Sail Away - a flop despite the presence of the great Elaine Stritch in the lead), Bob Merril's wistful “Mira” from Carnival, and Arlen and Harburg's “Lydia the Tattooed Lady”. There are a number of rarely-heard gems as well, including Portia Nelson's “Confessions of a New Yorker” (in which she confesses to being “in hate/love” with the town), Murray Grand's droll “The Spider and the Fly” and one of Ross' own compositions, the nostalgic “Manhattan Moon”. There's even Irving Berlin's “Harlem on Her Mind”, from the “Headline Musical” As Thousands Cheer - an uncharitably chauvinistic take on Josephine Baker's spectacular Parisian career.

Paris, in fact, provides the inspiration for well over a third of the program. Like many of the songwriters he most admires such as Gershwin, Porter and Coward, Steve Ross has a special affection for Paris, where he recently had the distinction of being the first American to play the Bar Vendôme at the legendary Paris Ritz Hotel. So, in addition to the numbers about the City of Light cited above, Ross also treats the audience to a set of songs, in French, by the noted singer/songwriter Charles Trenet, including “La Mer” - made famous by Bobby Darin as “Beyond the Sea”. He also repeats his instrumental tribute to Edith Piaf, which made such a strong impression during his set at Chez Leon last fall.

Ross delivers all of this, as usual, with a breezy elegance that's reminiscent of Fred Astaire or the late Bobby Short. Listening to him, it's easy to imagine that you've been transported back to a late-1930s RKO musical, lounging around a small table in an Art Deco rooftop nightclub with a glittering Manhattan skyline visible in the background instead of the Cecil B. DeMille Egyptian décor of the Flim-Flam Room.

That's why the New York Times has called Steve Ross the “Crown Prince of New York cabaret" and also why you should reserve your tickets now by calling 314-531-0220 or surfing over to licketytix.com. Tickets for the show can be purchased with or without dinner, although given the high quality of Savor's food you'll probably want to enjoy both. It's what Fred and Ginger would do, after all.

- Chuck Lavazzi, KDHX.ORG, November 2006

The Sounds of Cabaret, Both Innocent and Elegant

The singer and pianist Steve Ross received the second annual Mabel Award on Monday evening “in recognition of his four decades of style, taste, flair and communicative power as the American troubadour.” The words of that citation, bestowed at Rose Hall in the opening-night program of the Cabaret Convention, say a lot about the event, produced by Donald Smith, the executive director of the Mabel Mercer Foundation.

The convention, now in its 17th year, evokes the musical ambience of the Upper East Side of Manhattan, circa 1959, as an urbane utopia. To attend a Cabaret Convention event is to enter a world in which Bob Dylan, that quintessential American troubadour, might as well not have been born.

In receiving his award, Mr. Ross talked about “sophistication,” a word that when applied to popular music was once synonymous with popular standards interpreted with particular attention paid to witty double-entendres and racy metaphors. But in today’s verbally forthright pop climate, the word has come to connote nostalgia for good manners, taste, discretion and subdued elegance. In a sense, yesterday’s worldliness has become today’s innocence.

“Say It With Music,” the first of five programs, was devoted to the songs of Irving Berlin. Mr. Ross distilled the tone of the evening by recollecting his first encounter with Mabel Mercer, the international chanteuse (and the convention’s spiritual godmother) who died in 1984. Her emotional empathy, he recalled, helped him recover from a broken heart. By turns breezy and bittersweet, he channeled both Mercer and Fred Astaire in his impeccable, understated renditions of “How Deep Is the Ocean,” “Cheek to Cheek” and “Let’s Face the Music and Dance.”

Barbara Carroll, who won last year’s Mabel award, brought a similar grace, understanding, classical refinement and charm to “Be Careful, It’s My Heart” and “Blue Skies.” Klea Blackhurst channeled Ethel Merman with lusty versions of “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” and “There’s No Business Like Show Business.”

Judy Blazer (“What’ll I Do?” ) echoed Judy Garland’s vocal quaver, and Lumiri Tubo (“Harlem on My Mind,” “Supper Time”) suggested Ethel Waters by way of Josephine Baker.

The evening’s comic high point was K T Sullivan’s deliciously saucy “You’d Be Surprised,” an uncharacteristically sexy Berlin song from 1919 to which she brought a Mae West swivel. (“He doesn’t look much like a lover/ But don’t judge a book by its cover.”) A slow, ruminative “Always,” by Sandy Stewart (accompanied on piano by Bill Charlap), sung in broken phrases that divided the song into different registers, struck the deepest note and turned the song into a lingering meditation on time itself.

- Stephen Holden, New York Times, October 18, 2006

An Evening With Steve Ross

The New York Times once dubbed singer and pianist Steve Ross the "Crown Prince of New York cabaret", but I'm not sure the title is appropriate. To begin with, it's not nearly exalted enough; I'm thinking "King" or "Emperor" might be nearer to the mark. And in any case, it's hard to picture the debonair Mr. Ross decked out with an orb, scepter and crown. A top hat, white tie and tails, on the other hand...

The fact is, Mr. Ross - who is appearing locally at the Chez Leon bistro through Saturday, November 5th - has a breezy elegance on stage that's reminiscent of Fred Astaire, Noel Coward, Cole Porter and, above all, the late and much lamented Bobby Short. Listening to Mr. Ross traverse the Great American Song Book, it's easy to imagine that you've been transported back to a late-1930s RKO musical, lounging around a small table in an Art Deco rooftop nightclub in tails or evening dress (as is your wont) with a glittering Manhattan skyline visible through the windows.

The intimate, cosmopolitan atmosphere of Chez Leon enhances the illusion. Normally we Mound City denizens get to see big-name cabaret acts only in the more formal setting of the Sheldon Concert Hall, so it's a treat to see someone like Mr. Ross in the more typical setting of a small supper club (90 seats when it's full, which it was on opening night), with a gourmet French dinner tucked away and a respectable Bordeaux readily at hand. Acoustically, Chez Leon is no match for the Sheldon - the acoustic tiles in the high ceiling aren't helpful and on opening night the microphone didn't always pick up Mr. Ross' voice effectively - but for ambience it's hard to beat.

Mr. Ross' program for the evening will be familiar to fans of the Grand Center Cabaret Series, where he has become something of a regular. There's lots of Cole Porter - a composer for whom Mr. Ross clearly has great affinity - as well as Gershwin, Berlin, Kern and Coward. There's also an instrumental medley of Edith Piaf songs, obscure comic numbers such as "He's Screwing Delores del Rio" (from the short-lived musical Say Goodbye to 174th Street) and Ivor Novello's witty "And Her Mother Comes Too", and a couple of Sondheim tunes - "Being Alive" and the song it replaced in Company, "Marry Me a Little". They're all delivered with the panache that I have come to associate with Mr. Ross' appearances, and which his fans have undoubtedly come to expect.

The bottom line is that if, as Mr. Ross suggests at the end of his set, you've always wanted to be Fred Astaire and/or Ginger Rogers - or even if you just love a classic song delivered with impeccable style - you'll want to catch Steve Ross at Chez Leon. Tickets are, according to my sources, getting scarce, especially for the dinner and show combo; call 314-361-1589 for more information. Chez Leon is at 4580 Laclede, just east of Euclid in the Central West End.

A final note: if you do attend, please remember that even in a more relaxed venue like Chez Leon, the basic rules of theatre etiquette still apply. That means no loud yakking during the Piaf medley and no getting up to walk out in the middle of "Send in the Clowns". This is an audience with the King of Cabaret, after all.

- Chuck Lavazzi, KDHX.ORG, November 4, 2005

Pianist plays on his French connections

Stylish Steve Ross is back in Knightsbridge, digging into popular song with an archeological expertise that makes him the supper-club sultan of Manhattan. Few New Yorkers can sing in French, but Ross’s latest solo show, an American in Paris, tackles this challenge head-on. All the great songs are there, and while his pronunciation won’t fool the gendarmes, his spirited delivery is spot on.

A rollicking version of The Night They Invented Champagne evoked the great Maurice Chevalier and a rousing piano medley, including La Vie en Rose and Je Ne Regrette Rien – “I won’t presume to sing these songs, but they must be played” – celebrated the power of Edith Piaf.

As always, Ross supplied gems of insight, noting that Charles Trenet, composer of the wonderful La Mer, had been badly served by English translators. I Wish You Love, had a brooding Gallic lyric, more like What’s Left of Our Love? And Josephine Baker, the singer and dancer who clawed her way out of East St. Louis “on pride, charm and sheer grit,” had captured Paris in a costume of simulated bananas. “You don’t find those as much as you used to, ” mused Ross.

And few knew that Yip Harburg, lyricist of April in Paris, never set foot east of Brooklyn. “Yeah, it’s true, ” Harburg admitted later, “but then I never was over the rainbow either.”

- Jack Massarik, March 23, 2005

Bobby Short’s death last week symbolized the end of an era in New York cabaret. The kind of the Carlyle is, of course, quite irreplaceable, but it is still reassuring to discover that Steve Ross, another of Manhattan’s saloon fixtures, is in such beguiling form.

The programme that the singer-pianist brings to London – a celebration of Paris through the eyes of Cole Porter, Edith Piaf and their contemporaries – is the most sprightly and inventive show he has delivered in years. Franco-American relations need all the help they can get at the moment. (If you want o hear the spirit of chanson mixed with contemporary soul-jazz and a hint of flamenco guitar. I recommend Dee Dee Bridgewaters’ new album, J’ai Deux Amours.) Cynics might argue that Ross, with his trademark tuxedo and carnation, conjures up a sentimentalized image of the City of light that would have seemed outmoded even when Porter was still alive.

But what’s wrong with that? If you want reality, you can go eat a BigMac in Les Halles any day of the week. As he delivers a crisp instrumental version of Sous le Ciel de Paris and breaks into a poised tribute to Charles Trenet on La Mer and Que Reste-t-il de Nos Amours? Ross demonstrates that the illusions are still worth clinging to.

In the past, his porter-Astaire pastiches have sometimes seemed a shade predictable. This programme allows him ample room for manoeuvre. He adds a steely version of Jacques Brel’s la Chanson des Vieux Amants, wallows in the picture-postcard romance of Lerner and Loewe’s songs from Gigi and plays up the wry humour of the Tale of the Oyster, the high-society ditty from Fifty Million Frenchmen, a show that was recently revived in Ian Marshall Fisher’s Lost Musicals series…Ross’s French accent is less than perfect, yet only pedants would worry too much about that. Nor does he pretend to be one of the world’s great singers.

He is a conversationalist at heart, his unassuming voice bolstered by some artful piano-playing. His Piaf medley was a robust instrumental showcase, ranging from La Vie en Rose to a suitably emphatic treatment of Padam. He can be bluesy too, as he demonstrated on his sequence dedicated to Josephine Baker. One thoughtful juxtaposition followed another. Just a Gigolo segued into Johnny Mercer’s elegiac lyrics on When the World was Young. A boulevardier on the loose, Ross seemed incapable of putting a foot wrong.

London Times – March 31, 2005

Going Out in London: Cabaret Singer Steve Ross Celebrates Paris

March 28 (Bloomberg) -- Anyone who wondered about the lost era of high-toned, late-night singing should hotfoot it to Steve Ross's London residency at Pizza on the Park. Though it may be in a smart location between Knightsbridge and Belgravia, the low-ceilinged dark room can't rival the elegance of New York venues like the Algonquin, the cabaret room Ross re-opened after 40 years' silence in the 1970s. Still, the right performer easily reminds audiences why Pizza on the Park remains London's leading spot for cabaret.

Seated at a piano in tuxedo, sporting a red carnation and armed with a trove of classic songs, Ross's latest outing borrows its title from the Gene Kelly 1951 movie ``An American in Paris.'' Ross's crisp vocal style is a million miles from that of Billie Holiday though he might just as well have used her album title ``Songs for Distingue Lovers.'' Loves lost and won slip in and out of these songs evoking the French capital.

It's not often that you can describe a singer by what he doesn't sing. Ross announces that when it comes to Parisian
talent, the songs of ``the little sparrow Edith Piaf'' must be heard but that he ``won't presume to sing them.'' Restraint is Ross's keynote. Toward the end of the first half when he momentarily lets rips, you realize there's a big voice there.

Vocal Wink

Ross's style is sly insinuation, the vocal equivalent of the raised eyebrow. He suggests details rather than going for the overblown effect of lounge acts who mistake gutsy bravado for taste. Ross shows off the song, not his interpretation. His glee as he revels in the outbreak of multiple rhymes in a Cole Porter song like ``Can-Can'' is infectious. He's also at ease tossing off a nonchalant walking rhythm on Harold Arlen's ``I've Got the World on a String.'' And he's amusing telling the story of Vernon Duke and Yip Harburg writing the classic ``April in Paris'' despite neither of them ever having visited the city. Ross's piano playing has a life of its own. One minute, it's helping to depict a lyric with Ravel-like passages, the next he's racing against the rhythm like a jazz man. And if it's left-hand stride piano you long for, Ross is the guy. With the death this week of his only rival, Bobby Short, Ross is now peerless and not to be missed.

- David Benedict, Bloomberg News, March 28, 2005

“The elegant Gotham troubadour Steve Ross, making a resplendent appearance in white tie and tails, is the latest entry in the recent spate of tributes to Fred Astaire. Long one of the most polished interpreters of the artful legacy of American film and theater song, Ross is a smoothly appealing light baritone and a pianist of nuance and flourish. Approaching his repertoire with a fierce dedication to a song's intent, he never toys with an original lyric. He sings them they way they were written; the polish comes in his keenly structured phrasing.

The Astaire legacy is a bountiful one, and Ross glides through more than 16 selections from the pens of Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and the Gershwins.

His take on "Night and Day" is a veritable concerto, "Dancing in the Dark" assumes simmering poetic proportions, and "Shall We Dance" is so buoyantly airborne that one finds it difficult to remains seated,

"Please Don't Monkey With Broadway," a Porter tune that served as a duet for Astaire and George Murphy, remains a jaunty valid plea, and Ross frames "It Only Happens When I Dance with You" with a romanticism that aims straight for the heart.

Ross is assisted by pianist Tom Jennings, and they wrap up the first act with a soaring instrumental medley of "The Carioca" and "Flying Down to Rio" that evokes airy imagery of Fred and Ginger dancing on highly polished floors.

The balance of the program is nestled in familiar Ross concert and club repertoire, that features a plaintive romantic reflection with "Song on the Sand" from "La Cage aux Folles" and Stephen Sondheim's rarely heard "Who Could Be Blue" that reignites the torch song. He adds a postscript with Berlin's "Blue Skies" that offers a ray of hope for the brokenhearted.

Ross injects a few witty anecdotes along the way, and adds some flavorful naughty songs about the sex lives of dolphins and a doomed relationship between "The Spider and the Fly."

The new theater, which wisely puts its address in its name at 59E59, is an attractive and comfortable performance space.”

- Robert L. Daniels, Variety, December 2004

“...No such reservations attach to the thoughtful, wryly urbane Ross, whose Astaire tribute forms half of Steve Ross Stars, the two-act concert he is performing at 59e59. The Theater setting is not ideal, but this master of bittersweet suavity has a natural affinity with the material. His gentle

singing with its pervasive suggestion of gray skies, stores reserves of feeling beneath a camouflage of nonchalance. And Ross even captures a sense of Astaire's movement, through his flud and expressive piano playing. He dances on the keys: elegant, graceful and here to be heard.”

Time Out NY, Dec. 16, 2004

“With three productions at once featuring Fred Astaire songs, how does a cabaret-goer choose? Actually, there’s no need to: this reviewer has seen all three shows; each is happily different from the other, and each ranks among the season’s top musical entertainments. In his evening, Steve Ross Stars, playing at 59E59 through the end of December, Ross comes closest to embodying the special qualities that audiences treasured in Astaire: a light, smooth style, a gentle and gentlemanly manner, and elegance. Add Ross’s imaginative keyboard stylings and his strength as a superb interpreter of lyrics, and you’ve got an Astaire-way to paradise.

The evening is divided into two halves. The first is the Astaire songs – reprising an earlier, successful show, Steve Ross Sings Fred Astaire – with selections created, of course, by Irving Berlin, the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Schwartz and Dietz, Kern and Fields, and Arlen and Mercer. Following intermission, he offers a mixture of standards by Sondheim, Kander and Ebb, Jerry Herman and others. Accompanying Ross, in rich arrangements created by the late Wally Harper, are Tom Jennings on a second piano and Nicholas Walker on bass. Your cabaret season is incomplete without this visit with Steve Ross.”

- Peter Haas, Cabaret Scenes, December 2004

“Fred Astaire must be dancing on heaven's ceiling. Currently, there are three major New York shows about the 20th century's greatest song-and-dance man. We already wrote about one of them: Andrea Marcovicci's insightful and sensuous cabaret act at The Oak Room at the Algonquin. The second is a new version of an Astaire show that Steve Ross performed many years ago. This time, he's added a second piano (and pianist) to the adventure, as well as a bass player

Ross is perhaps today's most ideal channeler of Astaire as a singer; he's holding forth through the month of December in the largest of the spiffy new theaters in the 59E59complex. His patter is smart and dryly comic, his piano playing is smooth as silk, and he sings with an honesty and integrity that makes you quickly forget that his voice is nothing special. Of course, that's what a lot of folks said about Astaire, yet the greatest composers of his day -- Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, the Gershwins – wanted him to introduce their songs because he always sang them with honesty and integrity.

The first act of Ross's show is devoted entirely to standards made famous by Fred Astaire: great material, great arrangements, great interpretations. The second act is an eclectic mix of songs that have served Ross well over the years. A kind of "Best of Steve Ross," it's a delightful set of obscure comic gems, delicate ballads, and so on. Steve Ross is an American cabaret treasure, and this is a wonderful opportunity to see and hear him in a theater setting.”

– The Siegels’ Column, Theatremania, December 2004

The performing life of the singer-pianist is a strange one; there is plenty of room backstage, but noone to share the blame for any onstage disasters. All the performer has is a piano, a voice and possibly a good suit.

Steve Ross has a very sharp tux, and nimble fingers, but it’s his voice that really captured the audience at the National Press Club last Saturday night. It puts me in mind of Fred Astaire (whose influence as a singer was such that Mel Torme once named him as his all-time favourite vocalist).

It’s a light, fragile sound, and it suits Ross’s material perfectly. Once, it reminds us, male singers actually got quieter as they got higher, as if to draw the beloved closer, and not deafen her with testosterone.

“If it weren’t for unrequited love, I’d be out of a job,” Ross remarked, and his presentation of romantic material throughout the evening was a miniature how-to manual for aspiring balladeers. It’s almost impossible to perform Rodgers and Hart’s Spring is Here, Jim Croce’s Time in a Bottle and Noel Coward’s Someday I’ll Find You without a trace of irony or a hint of camp, but Ross managed it with apparent ease.

He also demonstrated that he may be, apart from Dame Judi Dench, the only performer we should allow to sing Send in the Clowns.

There was plenty of rhythm as well as romance, and Ross delighted his audience with little-known gems such as Johnny Mercer’s Last Night on the Back Porch.

He has a prodigious memory for lyrics, and a lot of them were Lorenz Hart’s and Cole Porter’s naughty original lines that never made it to Hollywood.

Ross plays the piano in a lush style that I always associate with New York cabaret. It’s astonishing how intricate his self-accompaniment is, given the amount of vocal attention his songs require.

And the piano is not merely noodling; I particularly liked the whole tone scale that plays under the mention of Debussy and Ravel in Cole Porter’s Can Can. It also takes a brave pianist to present a medley of Edith Piaf songs sans lyrics.

Cabaret performers can fall into the trap of presenting mere tributes to dead songwriters, but Ross made the material his own, sometimes with little more than a sideways glance.

By evening’s end he had transported a room of grateful people back to a time that probably never existed; a between-the-wars world, where reticence and understatement were sexy, and songwriting really mattered.

- Peter Casey, Canberra Times, June 5, 2004

Showman at his finest

New York’s Steve Ross epitomizes what most people probably think of as cabaret: one man and his piano, dressed in tuxedo and carnation, armed with a grab-bag of devastatingly witty ditties, sentimental favourites and wicked one liners.

What they might not realize is how delightfully fresh and funny these timeless tunes and this tried-and-true formula can feel in the hands of a master showman.

He launches straight into a jazzy interpretation of Puttin’ on the Ritz, then reduces the audience to tears of laughter with the devastatingly clever Depression-era humor of Hungry Women.

He shows a sentimental side with Irving Berlin’s melancholy What’ll I Do,? takes us striding through the ridiculous upbeat rhythms of The Unrequited Lover’s March and even tackles “modern songs” – such as 1974’s Time in a Bottle.

When it’s time for Cole Porter’s I Get a Kick out of You and Anything Goes, Ross’s fingers fly across the keys, while his tongue twists in turn around the frenetically funny lyrics of Can-Can and an oyster’s unfortunate ode to social aspirations.

Ross demonstrates he’s no slouch when it comes to songwriting, either, with his influences shining through brightly on Manhanttan Moon, sandwiched between some Noel Coward and the saucy closer, You’ll Have to Show It to Mother (Before You Can Show It to Me).-

Patrick McDonald, Adelaide Cabaret Festival– June 18, 2004

Steve Ross was born into the wrong era. You can tell from the music he performs, from the red carnation adorning his tuxedo, and from his urbane and self-effacing variant of that old-fashioned thing called charm. It all suggests the New Yorker is about 70 years out of his natural temporal milieu.

Lucky us. The Ross school of cabaret is a ready-made master class for the scores of bright young things who crowd our stages with abundant talent, raucous energy and in-your-face discharges of undiluted ego. Ross makes the songs the stars of his shows, and, via his shrewdly judged readings, enchants us with his own wit, sincerity and flair.

Thanks to his instinct for understatement, he slides between comedy and heartbreak astonishingly effortlessly, without the least sense of jarring. Although it is the wit - spoken, and in songs by the likes of Porter and Coward - that is immediately engaging, his treatment of more penetrating songs is just as masterful.

Like the best comics, there is an aura of sadness around him, which, when he is being funny, emerges in his dry delivery. Then, rather than trowelling on the sentiment for the serious material, he sings with the poignancy of one trying to be stoic in the face of adversity. "If it weren't for unrequited love," he told us, "I'd be out of a job." He could have added that some ardent, carnal requiting helps flesh out the repertoire, too.

This audience lapped up the more risque songs, such as Ladies and Gentlemen That's Love, And Her Mother Came Too and A Bar on the Piccolo Marina, all thriving on Ross's arched-eyebrow sophistication.

Like the funny songs being balanced by the sad, there were also newer ones to complement the old, such as the superb Unusual Way from Maury Yeston's Nine, and Ross's own Manhattan Moon.

His crisp piano playing crystallised into an elegant interlude in Some Day I'll Find You and fuelled the yearning lyric of 99 Miles From LA, one of the songs for which he darkened his breezy voice, like a mood change in the lighting. The setbacks, laughs, loves and bawdiness all glided past, as though seen through the windows of a 1930s Rolls-Royce. Called Rhythm and Romance, the ride is highly recommended.

- John Shand, Woodfire Cabaret. June 14, 2004

“Steve Ross is a performer who likes to remain above the fray, frolicking in a high-rent urban time warp of his own imagining. To hear this dapper singer and pianist who has put down roots in the dining room of the Stanhope Park Hyatt Hotel (opposite the Metropolitan Museum of Art) is to absorb the Playboy philosophy as it might have been written by Noël Coward: keep things light and airy with just a dash of the bittersweet. And when life in one place becomes too dull or complicated, simply "sail away," to quote Coward's paean to the therapeutic benefits of travel.

Mr. Ross's performances have nothing to do with vocal splendor, harmonic depth, pianistic virtuosity or rhythmic complexity. They're all about maintaining a cultivated facade and telling a story that camouflages the dark side of life with elegant wit. Many of the rhythms in "Rhythm and Romance," which plays through May 15, are agile fox trots played in a galloping society-piano style. That piano propels and punctuates the stories Mr. Ross spins in a dry, perfectly enunciated speech-song, illustrated here and there with a raised eyebrow and a knowing smile.

Coward and Fred Astaire are the twin peaks of Mr. Ross's iconography, with a sequence of five Coward songs the centerpiece of his latest show. Coward's "Bar on the Piccolo Marina," the piéce de resistance, is a chattery bonbon of period gossip about a proper English widow gone wild in Capri. The song belongs to Mr. Ross. It is almost matched in humor by Marshall Barer and David Ross's obscure "Teeny Tiny Lady," whose lyrics prove that the insistent insertion of "teeny" and tiny" into a dark scenario can make it funny”

– Stephen Holden, N.Y. Times, April 2004

“Under the collective title of "Rhythm and Romance," Gotham troubadour Steve Ross boasts a flexible repertoire of love songs that express varied emotions. The suave and savvy veteran of cabaret crooning suggests his bracing collection of theater and film songs can be easily categorized under the collective reflections "I was in love," "I am in love" or "I want to be in love." In his return engagement at the posh Stanhope Park Regency, Ross is a personable host for a lyrical stroll down lovers' lane.

A staple of Manhattan's cabaret scene for more than four decades, Ross exudes great charm, sings with an appealing light baritone and plays piano with a flowery grace and dizzying assurance. Ross balances an expansive body of songs from the 1920s and '30s that reach forward into the more contemporary terrain of Jim Croce, Maury Yeston and Stephen Sondheim.

And when is the last time you heard all of Cole Porter's deliciously clever verses for "It's De-Lovely"? It goes on forever, with five choruses boasting a heady dose of je ne sais quoi.

Just when you thought you'd heard quite enough of Sondheim's "Send in the Clowns," Ross takes you back into the circus ring for yet another chance to reflect upon life's romantic misfortunes.

When it comes to the legacy of Noel Coward, there is no cabaret singer in town to match Ross' interpretive skills. From his wildly irreverent antics of "The Bar on the Piccolo Marina" to the ardent confessionals of "I'll See You Again" and "I'll Follow My Secret Heart," Ross targets both the funnybone and the heart with accuracy.

Yeston's "Unusual Way" from "Nine" also summons a trembling heartbeat, as does Jerry Herman's "It Only Takes a Moment."

There are many more pleasures here. A racing tempo braced by dazzling piano runs complements Irving Berlin's "Let Yourself Go," while Jerome Kern's "The Way You Look Tonight" is rendered as a most captivating romantic observation.

For sheer unadulterated fun, "Last Night on the Back Porch -- I Loved Her Most of All" is a giddy showstopper. It's a mere eight decades old and the art of kissing has never been more delightfully defined.

This time around, Ross has the luxury of Brian Kassier's full-bodied bass accompaniment to provide a nice cushion for the expansive hour that Ross fills so luxuriously.”

- Robert Daniels, Variety, April 2004

“Singer/pianist Steve Ross has returned to the Stanhope Park Hyatt with his newest show, Rhythm and Romance, a delightful show by one New York's finest 'café' cabaret performers. As always, Ross displays a keen, dry wit and an understated delivery that oftentimes brings new understanding to familiar numbers. One such surprising occurrence happened with the most unlikely of songs, the 70s pop classic "Time in a Bottle" by Jim Croce. Thelayers of schmaltz have been stripped away to reveal a surprisingly poignant and beautiful song, which has been effectively paired with a new number, "Time," from Barry Kleinbort/Joseph Thalken's upcoming musical, Was. Equally surprising was the effectiveness of one of the most overdone Numbers in cabaret, Sondheim's one true standard, "Send in the Clowns." Ross' interpretation of the song, which is rarely performed by men, ranks among the best I have heard, thanks to a layer of disappointment and a trace of anger with which he infused it.

Of course, Ross' chief strength his interpretation of numbers displaying a dry wit, especially those by Noel Coward, and in that arena he does not disappoint, thanks to a sparkling rendition of Coward's "A Bar on the Piccolo Marina." Other comic highlights include "Teeny Tiny Lady" (Marshal Barer and David Ross), Cole Porter's "It's De-Lovely," and the very Porter-esque "Ladies and Gentlemen That's Love" (Lew Brown/Ray Henderson).”

- Jonathan Frank, Talkin’ Broadway, 2004

Over at the Stanhope Park Hyatt, two shows are being performed in its dining room that recall the bygone days of New York cabaret at its most elegant: Steve Ross's’ My Manhattan and Anna Bergman's Across a Crowded Room. Steve Ross, whose show celebrates his thirty-five year love affair with Manhattan, is one of the few proponents left of the 'café' style of cabaret; a more civilized and intimate form of entertainment when the music never went above a certain decibel level and the wit was as dry as the martinis. The simplicity of his delivery oftentimes brings out fresh levels of vulnerability and intimacy to his numbers, such as Cole Porter's "Down in the Depths (of the Ninetieth Floor)." Usually delivered in an ironic, self-mocking manner, the song has become a soliloquy of gentle, self-realized heartbreak in Ross's hands. Its unlikely pairing with Stephen

Sondheim's "Another Hundred People" is surprisingly effective as it brings to mind another mob of people descending on the city to break one's heart. Another tender highlight of the evening is the little-known "A Tree in the Park" from Rodgers and Hart's Peggy Ann, which ranks as one of the most tender love songs composed by the team.

Ross's greatest strength is his dry wit, which is present in all of his patter and a great many of his songs, such as Portia Nelson's love/hate song of the city, "Confessions of a New Yorker," and Murray Grand's comic cautionary fable, "The Spider and the Fly." His wit also appears in his stellar piano playing, such as his inclusion of quotes of "The Man Who Got Away" in his pairing of Peter Allen's "6:30 Sunday Morning" and the Mercer/Arlen classic, "One for the Road."

- Jonathan Frank, Talkin’ Broadway

NEW YORK – 11/03

“From now until January, Steve Ross, who is a sitdown troubadour, a minstrel at the Baldwin, is giving vocal ability and undying affection to songs about New York. He’s such a classy guy at delineation that some of the more banal tunes sound better in his keeping. That rarity “City Lights” gets things started and then there is Porter in the mix – “Don’t Monkey With Broadway” and “Down in the Depths on the Ninetieth Floor” are certainly C.P.s. In selling sophistication and charm, Ross is boss. Sondheim, hart, and George M. Cohan are not neglected. If this be autumn in New York and the winter wonderland that is ultimately Manhattan in December, credits to you Ross for being a welcome ambassador of song.”

Gary Stevens, NNA

Manhattan may not be the personal property of the elegant saloon singer Steve Ross, but it would be hard to deny the rightful claim he has staked on the isle for over three decades. The Gotham cabaret staple is as much a part of the city lights as Times Square, the Empire State