Few, if anyone, can convey the excitement, romance, sophistication and many dimensions of New York City in song as well as Steve Ross. His show at Birdland was a witty, informative and passionate paean to The Big Apple, a city that he deeply loves.

He opened with two songs about Broadway, “Give My Regards to Broadway” which evolved into “Please Don’t Monkey with Broadway.”

Throughout the one-hour plus set, Ross examined, through songs, various aspects of life in New York, adding some pithy, and often humorous, commentary along the way.

He presented some of the earlier popular songs about New York, titles like “The Bowery,” “East Side, West Side,” “Streets of New York” and “Do the New York.”

Rodgers and Hart often turned their attention to New York City with songs such as “Manhattan,” “I Got to Get Back to New York,” “At the Roxy Music Hall” and “A Tree in the Park.” Likewise did Cole Porter. Ross wonderfully combined Porter’s ironic song of love lost, “Down in the Depths (on the 90th Floor)” with the acceptance present in “Just One of Those Things,” also by Porter.

Many other Broadway songwriters turned their attention to the City with songs like “Every Street’s a Boulevard in Old New York,” from Hazel Flagg, “Broadway Baby” from Follies, Tuscaloosa’s Calling Me, But I’m Not Going,” from the show of the same name, and “When You’re Far Away From New York Town,” from Jennie. Ross cleverly combined two show tunes, “Lonely Street,” from On the Town, and “Another Hundred People,” from Company, into a musical picture of the challenges of living in New York City.

He also called upon some wonderful obscurities that depicted various aspects of city life, Michael McWhinney and Jerry Powell’s “New York Coloring Book,” “The Spider and the Fly” by Murray Grand, Peter Allen’s “Six-Thirty Sunday Morning,” “Subway to the Country” by David Ackles, and the haunting “Manhattan Moon,” written by Ross and Richard Crosby.

The closing medley of two more Porter tunes, “Take Me Back to Manhattan” and “I Happen to Like New York” confirmed the thing that was evident throughout the show, that in his 40 plus years as a confirmed New Yorker, this chap who originally hailed from Washington, DC, has given his heart and soul to the greatest city to be found anywhere in the world.

Four Nations Ensemble

Germantown, NY

You don’t really have to go to war to know that it’s hell. It’s as close as your phone and there’s no glory in it. Except for the music. Across the centuries and the genres, the battle hymns, the marches, the songs of yearning, mourning, waiting, hoping, are mostly glorious.

Saturday, November 12 was the day after Veterans Day and four days after Election Day. It was a pretty glorious autumn afternoon at Midwood, Joan Davidson’s house on the Hudson. Being there was a respite for the walking wounded, the shell shocked veterans of the War of 2016. For a little more than an hour, as the sun sank slowly into the river and songs from all the wars filled the room, everything was beautiful.

Andrew Appel’s Four Nations Ensemble is an early music group, but last Saturday was an eclectic departure, spanning the wars and the years from 1682 to 1945. The musicians of Four Nations and its guest artists are always superb, but this particular cast of voices and instruments was even more so.

As Appel noted in his introduction, we stopped singing about war itself sometime in md-19th century, but before then, to quote “Vo Far Guerra” (Handel 1711), lyricists wrote such lines as “I want to be victorious over the outstretched necks that offend me”. Nice.

In addition to Appel’s nimble harpsichord, Loretta O’Sullivan’s mellow cello, and Tatiana Chulochnikova’s dazzling violin (not to mention her dazzling shoes), there was a guest artist, the much loved and acclaimed pianist-singer, Steve Ross, and a new member of Four Nations, soprano Pascale Beaudin, who is indeed from another country, Canada. She nailed everything from Purcell to Coward in a voice so rich and creamy it sounds fattening.

Inexplicably, I had never before heard Ross, who played the Oak Room at the Algonquin until it was reduced beyond recognition, though I co-authored an online petition to save it.

Davidson’s living room has the same unflashy pre-war elegance as the Oak Room before its demise, and Ross, as has oft been said, is the perfect amanuensis for Astaire. But what sent me to the place I always long to go when I hear music, was his voice, richer, deeper and more touching than Astaire’s.

A fine, straight ahead rendition of Irving Berlin’s comic first world war lament, “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning” notwithstanding, Ross is best on such killers as Jerome Kern’s love letter to “a lady known as Paris” and Ivor Novello’s “Keep the Home Fires Burning”. By the time Ross sang Harold Arlen’s “My Shining Hour”, a song that has haunted me forever, but had never evoked war for me before, the sun had set, but the hour was still shining.

Sydney, Australia

If a carnation could sing it might sound something like Steve Ross: light, mellifluous and guileless. His was never a big voice, but nor has the New York cabaret singer-pianist lost much power or range now he is of a certain age. Suave, agile and accurate, it is the perfect instrument to flutter across the multisyllabic wit of Cole Porter, Noel Coward, Eddie Cantor and the rest.

A Steve Ross show winds back the clock and one's cares simultaneously. The bottle-green velvet dinner jacket he sported was actually tailored for Coward, and you could swear that many of the classic songs were tailored for Ross, himself. Where so many contemporary singers, whether of jazz or cabaret, delve into this repertoire to show off themselves, Ross does it show off the genius of the writing. He slides beneath the skin of each piece and spins us back down the years to a world of sharp wordplay and aesthetics dominated by elegance. Even unrequited love could be made elegant in that between-the-wars era central to this repertoire.

In singing sad or tender songs Ross, rather than becoming an actor manipulating the listener's emotions, lets the lyric do the work, while he ever so subtly teases the phrasing and the weighting of words. Two more recent compositions, La Fanette (Brel) and 99 Miles from LA (Hammond/David), stood out in this regard, the latter attracting some of his most affecting piano accompaniment.

He deftly structured the placement of and balance between love songs and amusing ones, delivering both with equal charm – a quality that for Ross is not varnish but the very furniture of his oeuvre. One of his funniest conceits was to sing My Favourite Things as if it had been written for The Threepenny Opera: slow, emphatic and wis ze hint of menace.

Tiny flaws have crept into his once pristine keyboard articulation, and his instrumentals could flirt with being twee or overwrought: properties that would never dare invade his singing.

Downstairs at the Maj, His Majesty's Theatre

Perth, Australia

New York pianist and singer Steve Ross suggests that if we could sum up Western civilisation in four words they would be — Cole Porter, Fred Astaire.

Context is everything, of course, and in the world of cabaret and music theatre inhabited by Ross with such sophistication and style there are probably no more powerful words. But you could also just as well add George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern and a few others who have contributed to the Great American Songbook and its calming influence on the aforementioned civilisation.

To enter Steve Ross’ world is to swing through the piano bars and cabaret rooms of swanky hotels and nightclubs in New York, Paris and London. These places are the spiritual home of this veteran of the cabaret scene, where homage is paid to the great composers and performers of popular song.

We might be in a basement venue in downtown Perth but Ross dons his dinner jacket and bow tie and, seated at the grand piano, allows us to experience the creativity, wit, sophistication, elegance and elan of cabaret from a nearly vanished era.

His greatest homage is to Fred Astaire, who had the good fortune to sing many of the tunes that are now part of popular music history. He tells us a little about Astaire’s dancing career debut as a five–year-old with his sister Adele, but makes it clear that he – Ross, that is – is a singer and pianist and not a dancer. Besides, there is no room on the stage for dancing, anyway.

From the opening number Top Hat, White Tie and Tails, from the 1948 film Easter Parade, Ross takes us on a journey down memory lane.

Maybe it might seem a dead-end street for those who cannot remember those times, or are simply too young to turn up. Unsurprisingly, this is a show for old-school devotees of American music.

Once dubbed the Crown Prince of Cabaret by the New York Times, Ross has more than 40 years’ experience — probably make that 50 years, he’s older than he looks — as a pianist and singer. (He’s old enough to have been Ethel Merman’s accompanist and that must have been a long time ago.)

His voice might just show its age slightly but Ross knows how to pace himself, and the diction and the pitch of his mellow vocal chords are perfectly placed, whether on such famous patter songs as Let’s Do It and the Oyster Song or full- bodied romantic ballads such as The Way You Look Tonight and Dancing in the Dark (“the world’s most existential song”).

His occasional partner was the sweet-voiced Rebecca Moore, a young woman with an unpretentious stage presence who could have been given more numbers to sing by herself.

His voice is deceptively low key but suited to this style of dapper – as we launch straight into Putting on the Ritz. He moves through the Cole Porter tongue twisters with ease and assurance; not surprising since he has been doing this since the late 1970s. Performing across six continents at places such as The Ritz in London, the Crillon in Paris and Imperial Hotel Tokyo. By his own description he started out as a ‘background piano player’ playing all the music he’d grown up with from listening to his mother play Gershwin, Coward and Porter; and you can still see this in his somewhat restrained style.

The thing about these hits is that they really tell a story and in Ross’s clear style of singing you can hear just about everything. Not necessarily a given with today’s performers. It was a revelation to hear so many of these older style songs that rarely get an outing; and even though there were several numbers that the 150 strong audience gleefully sang along with, there were many more surprising beauties. Ross ran through A Fine Romance, Fascinating Rhythm, Embraceable You – a medley from Swing Time the movie written for Fred Astaire with a backdrop of audience members saying, ‘oh I love that one!’ Dancing in the Dark by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz was an unknown discovery. First recorded by Bing Crosby in 1931 this song gorgeously suited Ross’s range and its sad beauty meant it stayed at the top of the pops for 6 weeks.

Cole Porter’s Night and Day was another that drew gasps of appreciation from the audience where Ross elegantly sung the upper range of, as he quipped; ‘best song about sexual obsession’. We heard the great fun Can-Can which was written when Porter’s wife was very ill and dying but the description of someone who worked with Porter was ‘he would think up the rhythm, then he would write the words to fit the rhythm and then he’d write the music to fit the words’, and you can hear that clever construction in the lyrics. ‘I get a kick out of you’ with its famous lines: “I get no kick from Champagne, mere alcohol doesn’t thrill me at all”…was another that had the audience singing along. The light breezy piano playing continued with Anything Goes.

The off Broadway hit show, more properly entitled I Won’t Dance: The Songs of Fred Astaire and Cole Porter are so beautifully interwoven with enchanting stories of the period you can easily see where Ross’s second career as public radio broadcaster and educator lies; honing his passion of American popular music of the era. Years of residency at the celebrated Oak Room at Hotel Algonquin put him in the vanguard of the cabaret revival.

Steve Ross’s bespoke green velvet smoking jacket is his most ostentatious prop - which we later hear is bequeathed from the Noel Coward Society in the UK to him. Ross was gracious enough to come back for an encore – 'Let’s do it, let’s fall in love’ - a resounding endorsement for a good fun night gently being guided into new areas of musical discovery by a seasoned cabaret performer who in 2015 received the Manhattan Association of Cabarets Lifetime Achievement Award.

Melbourne Cabaret Festival

Australia

Escape from the dark nights of winter as you return to another age where the clink of champagne glasses and twinkle of the ivories was all that accompanied easy nights of witty repartee and elegant entertainment. Yes, it’s New Yorker Steve Ross, aka the Crown Prince of Cabaret, touring his delicate and imitable concoction of musical ditties in ‘To Wit: Funny Songs Throughout The Ages‘ at the Melbourne Cabaret Festival.

Ross performs songs and stories from the great Transatlantic age of music in Europe and America. Be regaled by words of wisdom and irony from the likes of Noel Coward, Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter and other undiscovered experts. Revel in the torrid tales of failed love and ambitious social types, through songs such as ‘Mrs Worthington’, ‘Taking A Bath in the Blues’, and ‘Home Sweet Heaven’.

From the glint of glossy black on his grand piano’s top to the patina of his patented leather shoes, this tuxedoed theatrical raconteur par excellence has got it all nailed. There are tales of unrequited love, pushy stage mothers, exes contacting you from the afterlife, and love in the animal kingdom. His voice is deep and lustrous, one that only years spent entertaining crowds could produce. His knowledge of music and piano performance skill is superlative.

Ross’ demeanour is classy and affable. His lovely old-fashioned banter between songs is easy and intimate. He tells stories which are just as entertaining as the song narratives, and surprises with his veracity and sources. The songs relate tales from amorous suitors who lament the cost of feeding the modern woman they court; love songs in Latin from the 12th Century; the mating life of dolphins; oysters and other aphrodisiacs; and the sheer brilliance of the witty putdown told between the keys in both minor and major chords.

Anglophiles the world over exclaim that at last something ‘civilised’ is showing for their pleasure, and we have it in our little town as part of this winter’s wondrous Cabaret Festival. Get your finest shoes out, dust off your hat, and sport your cravat neck-tie/ beaded dress as you step back into the early 20th century to hear of the follies of modern man. Little has changed.

You will laugh gleefully as you enjoy the wonderful tales of human foibles these magic musicians created for our eternal listening pleasure as told by an aficionado as exemplar of the era.

Melbourne Cabaret Festival

Australia

The Melbourne Cabaret Festival is one of Victoria’s mid – year entertainment highlights.

Since beginning six years ago in 2010, the popular event has featured a diverse array of rising talent and popular artists such as Joey Arias, Amanda Harrison, Matthew Mitcham and Elise McCann. For its seventh jam – packed season, the 2016 edition showcased almost forty local and international acts.

In an impressive career, America’s Steve Ross has played high – profile Manhattan venues including 54 Below, The Algonquin Hotel, Birdland, Cafe Carlyle and The Rainbow Room.

Dubbed the ‘Crown Prince of Cabaret’ by The New York Times, his one – man act covers songs from musical icons like Noel Coward, Jerome Kern, George Gershwin and Cole Porter. In addition to performing as a sought – after cabaret artist and teacher, Ross has also starred on Broadway in ‘Present Laughter’ and in the hit movie, ‘Big’. Last year, he was given a Lifetime Achievement Honour for his work at the prestigious Manhattan Association of Cabarets & Clubs (MAC) Awards. (Previous recipients have included Betty Buckley, Rosemary Clooney, Liza Minnelli, Barry Manilow, and Stephen Schwartz.)

‘To Wit – Funny Songs Throughout the Ages’ is a sophisticated and hilarious master class in content, style and execution.

For sixty joyous minutes, Ross gave the enchanted audience at Prahran’s Chapel off Chapel a musical education to remember.

Dressed in a smart dinner suit and seated at a baby grand piano, Ross spoke – sang fifteen carefully selected tunes and ditties from, as he put it, ‘The Transatlantic Golden Age’. These musical comedy gems written mostly in the 1920s and 1930s, either well – known or rediscovered, were respectfully presented as they had first been performed.

Cabaret recreated in the authentic sense, this show was far less about Ross or his personal journey, and more about a passion for smart composition. However, he did let us in on an amusing trade secret. To write a show, remember the following four key points:

I was in love.

I am in love.

I want to be in love, and…

New York, New York.

Many of these tunes were delightfully tongue – twisting, to say the least. But with urbane charm to spare, Ross let us in on the joke. Supper club audiences from almost a century ago must have thrilled in the songs they were hearing. Many of the lyrics were risqué for their time, and these songs simply drip with wickedly clever double meanings. Modern audiences will also be rewarded for paying close attention. If nothing else, for wondering how these writers slipped by the censor’s red pen and got away with it!

Some of the show’s tuneful highlights included ‘The Dolphin’ (by Ann Crosswell & Lee Pockriss) ’Hungry Women’ (by Turk & Ahlert), ’Tale of the Oyster’ (by Cole Porter), ‘Mrs Worthington’ (by Noel Coward), ‘Three Penny Things’ (by John Wallowitch), before finishing up with ‘Let’s Do It’ (by Cole Porter). However, the evening’s festivities didn’t end there. Ross even entertained viewers with a fairy tale and a handful of cheeky personal ads as well. As one happy punter afterwards summed up the experience, “I could have listened to him all night!”

Laurie Beechman Theatre, NYC

MAC Award winner Steve Ross and Drama Desk winner Jim Brochu have been friends since the 1970s. They have done a lot of private parties together but their cabaret show, “Two Guys and A Grand” was performed at the Laurie Beechman Theatre May 24. The full house was packed with Broadway stars and cabaret stars. Their first memory was Ross’ engagement at a seedy bar where he would play Friday and Saturday nights and Brochu and Stan Freeman would sit at the bar all night and lead the customers in the standards they sang.

Their opening number was Irving Berlin’s “Pack Up Your Suns and Go to the Devil.” This led Brochu to complain that although Ross was vocally like Fred Astaire he was singing too softly. Ross countered that Brochu was singing too loud…like Ethel Merman! This led to an Astaire/Merman medley, featuring at least nine songs, Ross singing the Astaire ones and Brochu belting out the Merman ones. They confessed that Astaire and Merman did appear together on The Hollywood Palace together in this medley which can be found on you tube.

Brochu revealed he used to pay Ross to accompany him when he auditioned for Broadway shows. The number he sang was an Abe Burrows comedy number, “I’ll Bet You’re Sorry Now, Tokyo Rose” with lots of “l’s” on the “r” sound. Somehow he never got the part!

Of course, Brochu went into full Merman mode to belt out “Some People.”

Brochu discussed how the late David Burns took him under his wing and sponsored him at the venerable Players Club. Brochu amusingly discussed his application appearance which began with Burns introducing him to James Cagney! Then when he went before the interviewing Board, the President of the Board was Roland Winters and he told him how much he loved his Charlie Chan movies. Another member of the Board was Alfred Drake who was shorter than Brochu thought! Brochu later sponsored Ross at that club.

Ross discussed Noel Coward’s The Girl Who Came To Supper which took place during the Coronation. The two of them played two visiting Princes discussing their ancestors in a clever song called “Family Tree,” Coward inserted at the end of the first act the music hall singer Tessie O’Shea singing a London medley, including “London Pride“ and “Saturday Night at the Rose and Crown.” O’Shea won a Tony for her performance! Ross and Brochu performed that medley.

One of the best songs in the program was a song that Ross performed at Ted Hooks’ Backstage often. It was “Old Friend” by Gretchen Cryor and Nancy Ford from 1978’s I’m Getting My Act Together and Taking It On the Road and Steve sang it as movingly as he ever has.

Brochu then discussed how he was responsible for Ross getting that job at Ted Hook’s club as well as Ross’ appearance at the Plymouth in Coward’s Present Laughter. It ripped into the one-ups man duet “Where Would You Be Without Me” from Roar of the Greasepaint, Smell of the Crowd with Brochu doing the Cyril Ritchard part and Ross doing the Tony Newley part!

They returned to Stan Freeman and discussed his two Broadway shows, I Had A Ball and Lovely Ladies, Kind Gentlemen. Freeman handed Buddy Hackett, the star of the first, the title song with music by Jack Lawrence and Hackett told him to give it to the blonde newcomer. Karen Morrow killed with the number every night and Ross sang a moderate tempo of the song, changing keys on the second chorus. The second show was a musical version of The Teahouse of August Moon with music by Franklin Roosevelt Underwood. It was explained that it opened in 1970 when the Vietnam police action was taking place and no one wanted to see it. Brochu’s lifelong mentor, David Burns, was in it and he recreated one of Burns’ numbers, “You’ve Broken Fine Woman’s Heart” describing his wife’s heartbreak when he was thrown out of the service! The second song from the show was from the show within the show, a crazy ditty called “Call Me Back” which Ross and Brochu sold animatedly. They introduced Underwood in the audience.

The encore was another David Burns’ number, “Go Visit Your Grandmother” Kander and Ebb’s song from 70 Girls 70 which they performed all-out.

“Two Guys and a Grand” was a marvelous show and look forward to its return soon.

The Cabaret at Germano's

Baltimore, MD 

Somehow, the cumulative effect of watching Steve Ross, called an “American Cabaret Treasure,” sing classic material from the American Popular Songbook introduced by the dapper Fred Astaire is a perfect storm of cabaret sophistication.

Although Ross opened with a medley of songs about dancing, including “I Want to Be a Dancin’ Man” and “I Won’t Dance,” he stressed Astaire’s talent for giving rhythm and romance a voice in his vocal performances. Ross hit the expected biographical points for Astaire with illustrative songs—his early stage success with sister Adele (“Fascinating Rhythm”/”Oh, Lady Be Good!”), his success in the movies (“My Shining Hour,” a standout), and his latter television and recording work (“City of the Angels”—which Astaire wrote with Tommy Wolf— a delightful discovery).

As a singer/pianist, Ross has musical flexibility that allows him to pivot effortlessly when doing intricate medleys and to perfectly punctuate comic material. Although most notable for a soigné wit, Ross can also provide tremendous depth of feeling in a ballad like Porter’s “After You, Who?”—performing its brutal honesty. Most important, though, he is an incredibly genial host who forges a strong connection with his audience. This is an especially notable feat when one considers the fact that he is blocked behind a piano for most of his show.

The suave and urbane pianist-singer Steve Ross, often associated with songwriters such as Noël Coward and Cole Porter, branched out to Sondheim’s work for a concert engagement in London in 2008. Two of those performances were recorded, and the result is this delectable album. Ross’s voice, which often hearkens back to Coward’s, and his talent for mining lyrics, are beautifully suited to all of the material on Good Thing Going, whether it’s a familiar number (“Send in the Clowns”) or one heard less frequently, “Sand” (written for the movie Singing Out Loud). In the former instance, Ross’ sensitive vocals — combined with his insightful introduction — enhance the bittersweet emotion in the number. With “Sand” he finds a playful jazziness in a song often performed with a sort of melancholy. His work at the keyboard and as arranger also proves terrific, particularly when it comes to pairing seemingly unrelated songs. One of his choicest selections combines “So Many People” from Saturday Night and “One More Kiss” from Follies. Equally impressive throughout are Ross’s pianistic embellishments to songs. With Follies’ “Ah, Paris!,” a short piano section has a giddy and somehow crystalline sense, making the melody actually sound a bit like a chandelier that might have hung in the Moulin Rouge.

Pairing the sensitive and sophisticated approach to singing embodied in the style of STEVE ROSS with the magical songwriting genius of Stephen Sondheim is a winning combination, as can be heard on Good Thing Going (Harbinger – 3101). Ross is a superior interpreter of lyrics, and the richness of Sondheim’s words offers him a fertile source for challenging material to address. Ross and Duncan Knowles, a British producer, conceived and developed the material comprising the show captured on this disc in 2007. It was originally performed in a London theatre, then at the Oak Room in New York City before reaching Pizza in the Park, a club in London, where this performance was recorded on September 2008. Ross’s dialogue between songs is informative and witty, giving continuity to pieces taken from several shows, including songs that were cut from shows, and in one case, “Sand,” from an unproduced film. Ross has chosen an interesting selection of Sondheim songs. It has often been said that Sondheim’s songs are so character and situation driven that they lose much of their effect when performed outside of the context of the shows for which they were written. One hearing of Good Thing Going should convince the listener that this is nonsense. Ross has developed his own unique take on each song. His pairing of songs is particularly astute. Coupling “So Many People” and “One More Kiss” is wonderfully effective. Particularly appealing is having “Take the Moment” follow “With So Little to Be Sure Of,” both wonderful, but sadly underperformed gems that deserve more exposure. This is one of those albums that could easily command comments about each selection. Suffice to say that Ross has done a brilliant job of choosing the material, writing dialogue that unifies the program, and performing each song with his own knowing sensibility. An interesting side note is that he chose as the title for this collection, Good Thing Going, a superb song from Merrily We Roll Along that is not included in his show. It is indicative of the surprises that will enthrall you as you listen to Steve Ross, a master of the art of cabaret, interpret the songs of Stephen Sondheim, A master of the art of songwriting. (HarbingerRecords.com)

In the last few years there has been a veritable explosion of cabaret performances (and venues) in London, a style previously little-known here except by a few cognoscenti. But how do the live performances of cabaret artists differ from those of theatre actors or, at the other end of the scale, poplular singers who happen to include this type of material as part of their regular acts and recordings? The answer is a complex mixture of venue, scale, format, arrangements and delivery.

Solo presentations can encompass a wide spectrum. Some artists shine in performances in large packed auditoria, accompanied by full band or orchestra and enjoying slick productions and musical arrangements. Michael Feinstein is a master of these. Others may choose medium-size venues accompanied by just a handful of colleagues including their Musical Director at the piano and, perhaps, bass, drums and sometimes a single reed player.

Most intimate of all though is the cabaret performance in a small well-appointed room with its relaxed (and chatty) audience grouped around individual tables, replete with alcohol and nibbles. This places them only a few feet away from the performers who are on a barely-raised stage, all giving rise to the feeling that the artist is singing 'just for them'.

This is even more the case when the singer and pianist is actually one and the same person. This personal touch is emphasized if, at the conclusion of their set, the artist works the room, moving from table to table to trade pleasantries with their patrons who may well be adoring fans.

Some cabaret singers are former stage actors now adding another string to their bow. These artists often perform also in larger-scale venues and formats. Into this category the names of Barbara Cook and Maria Friedman readily spring to mind.

But there are a small number whose careers haven't followed that trajectory but, instead, have built it entirely around cabaret performances, sometimes coupled with live recordings of their shows. These artists are frequently little-known, even to many regular habitués of musical theatre and the concert hall.

Amongst the finest of these is unquestionably American Steve Ross whose career has been dedicated to cabaret, his repertoire frequently taken from The Great American Songbook with a speciality of the works of Cole Porter.

He hasn't been totally neglected by the media though. In 1990 BBC Radio had the foresight to broadcast a series of his live performances from London's Pizza on the Park, generous highlights of which were issued eight years later as a 2 hour 20 minutes, 41 track 2 CD set entitled Stolen Moments.

The present Sondheim CD under consideration, Good Thing Going - a number not actually on the disc itself - derives from live performances at the same venue in October 2008. Having first tried out the show in February 2007 at London's Jermyn Street Theatre it played at New York's Hotel Algonquin in September of the same year where Mr Sondheim himself saw it and evidently approved.

The show was devised by Ross along with Duncan Knowles (who also directed) and they jointly made the musical arrangements. Numbers are re-thought and re-invented but always in a way that complements the material rather than merely spotlighting the performer and his undoubted talents. They are always intelligent and "clever" in the very best of senses and, most of all, sometimes incredibly moving.

Steve Ross's way with songs is to give them a gentle transformation, thereby making them his very own. But this is often far more than just a "juicing-up" of the harmonies. For example, one might anticipate that a song would progress from a traditional start only for it later to take flight into something different. In "Marry Me a Little" the process is reversed as it opens in an archetypal laid-back cabaret style only for it - two minutes in - to revert to its original form, complete with agitated piano accompaniment, before concluding with moving simplicity. (The packaging would have been more accurate if it had described this number as "not used originally" in Company, rather than just "not used", as it is now the norm for it to close the first Act.

"Pretty Women" becomes a gentle bossa nova while the rhythm of "Being Alive" is changed subtly from 4/4 to a lilting 6/8. The title "Buddy's Blues" might normally be considered something of a misnomer, at least in its musical sense, given that, in its original form, it is rather a frenetic "get-off" number for a vaudeville comedian. Here it truly is a blues, cleverly introduced by a quote from Louise's strip version of "Let Me Entertain You" from Gypsy. We readily recognize these familiar numbers but the overall result is to transform them "into something rich and strange".

Steve is a highly accomplished pianist and his abilities in this field are heard to great effect throughout. Extended piano interludes are sometimes in short supply when a singer employs a separate accompanist as this can leave the former out on a limb with nothing to do, but when an artist combines these roles there's no such problem. A good example of this can be found in "Anyone Can Whistle".

Ross has been playing the circuit for very many years, so it's no surprise that his voice doesn't sound like that of a young man though fine singing is still very much in evidence. I would readliy agree with one commentator who described his delivery as "careworn". The closest comparison that comes to mind is that of Fred Astaire.

His choice of material here is, as always, wide-ranging including such surprises as "One More Kiss" and "Ah! Paris!". Less familiar numbers include "Who Could Be Blue?" which was cut from Follies and the first and unused version of "We're Going to be All Right" from Do I Hear a Waltz (music by Richard Rodgers) which is best known from its inclusion in Side by Side by Sondheim. Also from Waltz is a touching "Take the Moment" which closes his set.

As virtually all of Sondheim's output is now so well-known, it must have been difficult finding real rarities. The only one in this category is "Sand" from the unproduced 1992 film Singing Out Loud. Its inclusion surprised even Sondheim himself. (There is a previous recording of this number on Varese Sarabande's Sondheim at the Movies.)

There are too many felicities to note them all. Suffice to say that Ross makes you feel as if you are hearing well-loved and very familiar songs for the very first time. He provides brief, apposite and frequently witty introductions to his songs, all the while paying due respect to "Mr. Sondheim" himself. No fawning over-familiarity here.

These are live recordings edited from two separate performances. The close miking, along with the inclusion of audience reaction and applause, greatly enhances our feeling of involvement. All that is missing is actually being there in person. Inherent with live performances are the very occasional minor imperfections but these in no way detract from what is a notable achievement. The very last track of the disc is a bonus studio recording (made the following year)og "Good-bye For Now" from the film Reds which provides a touching an apposite conclusion.

The highest compliment that I can pay this CD is that, since the moment it arrived, it has rarely been off my player. I can see it keeping a place near the very top of my pile of solo Sondheim CDs.

You’ll find more Sondheim, and this time with vocals on another Harbinger Records release, Good Thing Going. On this beguiling album, cabaret artist extraordinaire Steve Ross’s perfect phrasing and gorgeous work at the piano lend new colors to some of the great songwriter’s best-known tunes, including “Send in the Clowns” from A Little Night Music and “Broadway Baby” from Follies.

Baltimore, MD

In Steve Ross on Broadway, the singer/pianist/raconteur performed an idiosyncratic selection of songs that found fame on the Great White Way. An opening of “Call Me Back” from Lovely Ladies, Kind Gentlemen set the tone for the show, contrasting a cry to be loved with a show-bizzy razzamatazz. Other mini-arcs in the show dealt with topics such as the Gershwins, Kurt Weill, the annoyance of not being in love, and the joy of newfound love. Ross particularly scored with a sequence demonstrating ravishing Broadway melodiousness with “My Heart Is So Full of You,” “Make Our Garden Grow,” and “All the Things You Are.”

The Steve Ross cabaret experience exists at the nexus of saloon singing and high art. As a saloon singer, he is adept at bringing freshness to familiar material and familiarity to new material. He can shift moods from heartfelt to impish to celebratory and bring the audience right along with him. And he has a way seeming to respect and honor his audience that is a model for performers everywhere.

As an artist, Ross has a talent for seamlessly balancing the many elements of cabaret performance. His show was a delightful combination of the familiar and unexpected. His musical style contrasts a dissonance in the accompaniment from a melodic vocal line. And he gets great effect from the way he varies the nuance of a song’s repeated lyric, such as the “about you” in “Losing My Mind,” varying the emphasis and emotional content behind it.

Ross ended the evening with the Chopin-inspired song “It’s Almost Christmas Eve” he wrote with Ken Hirsch and Rosie Casey. A return to Baltimore would certainly answer this reviewer’s holiday wishes.

Birdland, NYC 

Although Steve Ross continues in the tradition of Bobby Short, Matt Dennis and Ted Streater as an elegantly dressed man about town sitting at a piano, after 47 years entertaining, Ross continues to grow as a performer. His voice keeps getting stronger and his sound is more mellifluous. In Romance and Rhythm, Ross displayed his ability to work with, in the words of his favorite composer Cole Porter, “a big-time band.” The show featured a collection of 25 of the very best songs taken from the Great American Songbook. As is always the case with Ross, interesting and amusing comments are interspersed between the musical numbers.

He opened with a sprightly “Love Is on the Air Tonight” that lead into “Leader of a Big-Time Band,” accompanied by a band that perfectly captured the sound of the 1930s. A very snappy “42nd Street” was followed by an elegantly performed “They Can’t Take That Away from Me,” which included all of the verses. Ross began a medley of songs from the film Swing Time performing a soft and slow “The Way You Look Tonight” just accompanying himself on piano, followed by “A Fine Romance,” “Pick Yourself Up” and ending with only the band and his piano performing a rousing “Bojangles of Harlem.” He closed with a medley from Porter’s Anything Goes followed by what Ross said were two of his favorites by Porter: “I Concentrate on You” and “In the Still of the Night,” and two of Porter’s New York songs: “Take Me Back to Manhattan” and “I Happen to Like New York.” The first encore was “Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love)” featuring additional verses provided by Noël Coward and Ross himself. The second encore was a very special and heartfelt “The Last Time I Saw Paris.”

Birdland, NYC 

There was a very special event at Birdland on Monday, November 16 when Steve Ross appeared with an eleven piece orchestra and sang some very special songs accented by the horns, winds, percussion, a violin, and a very special bass player, Brian Cassier, who was the leader of the orchestra. The house was sold out and full of friends, singers, composers knee deep even at the bar.

Ross is singing better than ever, and his 100 year old vocal teacher was in the audience. He talked about a relative who was the one who used to bring him to New York City and take him to Broadway shows and Radio City Music Hall. He moved to New York City from Washington, DC in 1968 and has been performing in New York, London, Paris, and South America ever since!

Of course, he saluted his home town with lots of New York songs: “42nd Street,” “Take Me Back to Manhattan,” “I Happen To Like New York,” “I Have To Get Back To New York.” One wonderful song sung after he talked about Cole Porter and Noel Coward’s love of list songs, was “These Foolish Things Remind Me Of You” with all three choruses, something very few singers do.

He paused to talk about Paris and the devastation that has befallen that country. Then he sang a heart-breaking “Last Time I Saw Paris” which brought tears to everyone’s eyes. On some of the ballad selections, he accompanied himself on the piano for the first chorus before the bass and the orchestra joined him. The orchestra was great and definitely enhanced his vocal strength. One of his last songs was “Let’s Do It,” with special lyrics that he wrote himself! It was a hoot and a half considering Noel Coward also wrote special lyrics to that naughty ditty!

A recording Ross made of Sondheim songs “Good Thing Going” with Duncan Knowles is finally being released on Harbinger Records: http://harbingerrecords.com/good-thing-going-the-songs-of-stephen-sondheim/

Attending a Steve Ross show is often akin to time travel. The audience is transported back to eras when urbanity and dash were watchwords, when interpretation meant being as true to the period as the meaning of lyrics. The classy Mr. Ross, known primarily for iconoclastic solo performance, appeared at Birdland Monday night with a zealous 11-piece band helmed by long time confederate Brian Cassier. The joint was jumpin'.

Ross began with two lesser known songs, "Love is In the Air Tonight" (Johnny Mercer/ Richard Whiting from Varsity Show) and "Leader of A Big Time Band" (Cole Porter from Something For the Boys): In the gilded age, a Wall Street millionaire/Was the answer to a working maiden's prayer/But today she'd chuck that yearly fifty grand/For the leader of a big- time band. Both were toe-tapping, jubilant. Horns came in smart, sharp and sassy. One imagined late flapper fringe flying.

"Love Is Just Around the Corner" (Leo Robin/Lewis Gensler from Here Is My Heart) arrived a swingin'-down-the-lane arrangement punctuated by percussion and an upstart trumpet that called to mind Leo Gorcey (The Bowery Boys.) Every now and then we heard skibbling piano. (Sound balance often contrived to bury both piano and vocal.) "These Foolish Things" (Eric Maschwitz/Jack Strachey from Spread It Abroad) was a melodic layer cake with violin glace. "This is one of your favorites, I hope it's one of mine."

"No Strings" from Top Hat-a song Ross explained was "written by Irving Berlin, Russia's greatest export after Vodka"--was driven by jaunty piano and rhythmic drum. Trumpet solo became a sparking cocktail with a wah-wah chaser. A sentimental "Just The Way You Look Tonight," mid-Swingtime medley, had lilt into which we emotionally leaned. One might arguably call Ross "The Fred Astaire of his Idiom." No one else comes close to communicating the elegance, ease/illusive insouciance and exactitude of the artist. Usually just as singular with Noel Coward, Ross went awry tonight with "Bar On the Piccolo Marina," which I've repeatedly heard him do to perfection.

A lush "Dancing in the Dark" (Howard Dietz/Arthur Schwartz from The Band Wagon) was performed with chiffon piano cascades conjuring the rise and fall of Ginger Rogers' skirts as she raised and lowered her leg. "I Get a Kick Out of You" embodied grace and sophistication without pretension. In "I Concentrate On You," Ross allowed a hint of sob on the word "surrender" (On the light in your eyes when you surrender).

"Let Yourself Go" (Irving Berlin from Follow the Fleet) seems fully choreographed: First, slo- mo with purposeful drag buttered by horns, then insistent, hard on the keys, and finally, a fast boogie during which several musicians literally bounced in place.

The artist performed some numbers alone, spotlighting matchless inflection and pianistic musicianship. He can raise your pulse with infectious ebullience, slow your breath with jaded resignation, or stop it with depth of excavated tenderness. 'Think the man is flip? Listen to a ballad.

Steve Ross has been in New York for 47 years. With spirited renditions of "Take Me Back to Manhattan" and "I Happen To Like New York" (Cole Porter), the latter replete with classic bell rhythms and here, heraldic horns, the performer again expressed his love of this, his adopted home town.

"In view of what has happened to la famille en france" (the family-our-brothers in France), Ross closed with a solo of 1941's "The Last Time I Saw Paris" (Oscar Hammerstein II - inspired by German occupation of The City of Light/Jerome Kern). You could have heard a pin drop. Every bit of this sensitive man poured into remembrance and sympathy. Musicians turned towards him as if one. The room reflected.

Ross thanked Tom Duffy, the Director of Yale's Concert Band, for help on the arrangements and his centenarian vocal teacher, Maria Zhorella Fedorova (present and accounted for), who must be responsible for the flowering fullness of Ross's vocals.

Rhythm and romance

Romance and rhythm

A combination so real

An invitation to steal

Your heart

The Crazy Coqs, Brasserie Zédel

Piccadilly Circus, London

Where would Crazy Coqs be without its annual visit from ‘the crown prince of New York cabaret’, that evergreen entertainer Steve Ross?

Nobody today has his knowledge or repertoire of the Great American Songbook and on this visit to the cosy Piccadilly nightspot he served up, among the usual classics such as a stunning ‘Begin the Beguine’ instrumental, ‘All the Things You Are’ and ‘Fascinating Rhythm’, a good few humdingers that have got lost along the way.

This 75-minute trawl through material taken from Broadway shows was an education even to those who thought they knew their musicals. Who remembers ‘The Unrequited Love March’ from New Faces of 1968, ‘Call Me Back’ from Lovely Ladies, Kind Gentlemen, a 1970 show based on 1956 movie The Teahouse of the August Moon, or even ‘Comes Once in a Lifetime’ from a Comden and Green/Jule Styne 1961 collaboration Subways Are For Sleeping?

All lovingly introduced with Ross’ droll urbanity and wit. He is the epitome of cabaret and anyone wanting to hone his or her skills in this specialist art form should get along along to sit and marvel at a true master of it.

We got the ‘modern’ greats such as Sondheim and Kander and Ebb, but it wasn’t the stuff we were most familiar with. Whatever happened to Zorba, from which Ross sang the beautiful ‘Only Love’? Kander and Ebb’s dark musical was last seen on Broadway in 1983 and plans for an overdue revival seem to have stalled.

And he picked Sondheim’s least successful show, Anyone Can Whistle, which ran for only nine performances even with Hollywood stars Lee Remick and Angela Lansbury making their Broadway bows, and “one of his most rapturous melodies”, ‘With So Little to Be Sure Of’.

This was one of three compositions by “the genius of our day” – from Follies came a truly haunting ‘Losing My Mind’ – introduced to launch his new all-Sondheim CD Good Thing Going which he was signing at the end of the show.

Well ‘new’ is a bit of a misnomer – it is the 23-song pick of the live Pizza on the Park show in Knightsbridge seven years ago – but well worth the wait.

As ever with the debonair Ross there had to be his beloved Cole Porter too, and it was the witty ‘Nobody’s Chasing Me’ from Out of this World (as well as ‘Begin the Beguine’, of course, and what a joy he is on the piano).

More humour came from the less obvious source of Kurt Weill in a rare but very successful collaboration with American poet Ogden Nash called ‘How Much I Love You’, from the 1943 musical One Touch of Venus that made a star of Mary Martin.

Plenty of Gershwin too and two from Schwartz and Dietz – ‘I Guess I’ve Got to Change My Plan’ a real treat – and an all-join-in (second) encore ‘I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby’, by Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields, not a song usually associated with Broadway but this future pop standard made its debut, Ross told us, in Blackbirds of 1928.

That’s the beauty of Ross – you learn so much. But who’s going to preserve and keep performing this extraordinary material once Steve, now well into his 70s, hangs up his piano?

This wasn’t always Ross at his absolute best, but even 90 per cent of this consummate performer beats 100% of most anybody else. It’s great to have you back, Steve.

The Crazy Coqs, Brasserie Zédel

Piccadilly Circus, London

The ageless master of the Broadway-show-tune is back in town and any lover of the best in popular song should hurry to The Crazy Coqs, the perfect venue for Steve Ross, himself the epitome of sophistication. Ross’s programme reflects enormous scope, whether standards by Gershwin, Kern and Porter nestling aside lesser-known gems by Bob Merrill and Kander & Ebb, and titles virtually unknown such as the opening number, ‘Call me back‘, written by Stan Freeman & Franklin Underwood for Lovely Ladies, Kind Gentlemen, a short-lived musical based on the play The Teahouse of the August Moon.

A trio of Kurt Weill melodies includes the lovely ‘Here I’ll stay’ from Love Life and a rarely performed comedy number from One Touch of Venus which lists negative comparisons for intense affection (“a dachshund abhors revolving doors”). Those words are by Ogden Nash, but the master of the ‘catalogue’ number is the composer with whom Ross has become particularly identified, Cole Porter. Ross acknowledges that some people feel that all that is required for such a creation is a rhyming dictionary, but it takes genius to come up with the two brilliant examples that Ross gives us, ‘Nobody’s chasing me’ and ‘They couldn’t compare with you’, both from Out of This World. The former, the lament of a love-starved Juno, includes the following lyrics:

The dove each moment is bolder

The lark sings Ich liebe dich

Tristan is chasing Isolde

But nobody’s chasing mich.

Reminding us that Porter was also a master of melody, Ross fashions a beautiful piano arrangement of the ravishing ‘Begin the beguine’. Equally irresistible are the Gershwins’ ‘Oh, lady be good!’, Kern & Hammerstein’s ‘All the things you are’ and Kander & Ebb’s ‘Only love’ from the neglected score of Zorba. ‘Dancing in the dark’ delves into the murkier aspects of existence, and prompts Ross to revive E. Y. Harburg’s vocal arrangement of the ‘Barcarolle’ from The Tales of Hoffmann. Titled ‘Adrift on a star’, it was written for The Happiest Girl in the World, a musical version of Lysistrata, allegedly sabotaged by that perennial wrecker of superior scores, trouble with the book. New Faces of 1968 was also a failure, but Ross rescues a lively Sousa-type rouser, ‘The unrequited lovers’ march’.

No salute to Broadway could fail to include Sondheim. Ross gives us three songs of his, including a stride version of ‘Buddy’s Blues’ that gives it a fresh slant. (Ross’s latest release, Good Thing Going, includes over twenty Sondheim numbers given expert renditions.) Ross establishes a warm rapport with the audience, and he was easily able to coax us to join him in a final great air, Jimmy McHugh & Dorothy Fields’s ‘I can’t give you anything but love, baby’.

Directed by Walter Willison

With Special Guest Liliane Montevecchi

Bass-Jesse Bielenberg

Birdland, NYC 

July 27, 2015

The urbane Steve Ross has been one of our preeminent cabaret artists for so long, you would think he might relax and preen. This is very far from a truth that finds the virtuoso pianist/arranger/interpreter of song in better voice than ever, creating new shows that reflect artistry and singular taste. Though no one presents the work of several iconic authors better, Ross continues to broaden his base (and ours) and to hone his craft as well as entertain.

Steve Ross on Broadway is a mélange of organically grouped songs = suites mixing such as the Gershwins, Weil, Dietz & Schwartz, Kern, Loesser, Rodgers & Hart, Herman, Kander & Ebb...The performer offers both early material and that which is more familiar/recent as well as two adroit, notably arranged instrumentals. Part of the great pleasure of a Ross show is deft manipulation of our feelings, stilling hearts for only so long before emerging playful; coupling songs which create an emotional path.

We begin and end with a snappy “Call Me Back” (Frank Underwood/Stan Freeman from Lovely Ladies, Kind Gentlemen), the anthem of a showman who longs for an encore. It’s a piano roll/music hall tune, ebullient, but not without message. “Sweet and Lowdown” follows conjuring Busby Berkeley tappers. (George and Ira Gershwin from Tip-Toes.) Ross and his piano remember when. (Few performers more ably execute numbers in musical context.)

Bob Merrill’s Carnival is represented by several numbers beginning with “Mira” during which years fall away from Ross in seconds. Just as we’re set drifting to the poignant “Always You,” (you can hear a pin drop), the performer rebounds with an infectiously happy “Once in a Lifetime” (Comden & Green/Jule Stein from Subways Are For Sleeping) presented in perfect tandem with “Shine On Your Shoes” (Dietz and Schwartz from Flying Colors). Remembering Fred Astaire’s beguiling performance of the latter, one notices that Ross and Astaire both phrase with elegance, awareness, and innate brio.

Not content with temporary grins, Ross then proceeds with “Nobody’s Chasing Me,” poor Juno’s amusing lament about her philandering husband from Mount Olympus: The flood is chasing the levy/The wolf is out on a spree/The Ford is chasing the Chevy/But nobody’s chasing me...(Cole Porter from Out of This World). Though his eyebrows meet in a puzzled peak, the performer remains piquantly deadpan.

“I met our special guest years ago. I don’t remember the date, but I remember the time. We met at nine...” We met at eight, corrects Lilian Montevecchi entering with a bejeweled and feathered flourish. (“I Remember It Well”-Lerner and Lowe from Gigi.) When Ross plaintively asks Am I getting old? and she responds On, no, not you, the exchange brims with real time affection. The song has resonance.

Montevecchi then performs “Si Vous Aimez Les Poitrines” (Cole Porter from Nymph Errant) with a little French, a rolled ‘r,’ distinct growl and the seductive luster of a woman who could teach the art. She even gets us all to sing la-las between verses. (Ah those articulate hands.)

Next is Maury Yeston’s “Bonjour L’Amour” (from the actress’s role as prima ballerina Elizaveta Grushinskaya in Grand Hotel.) I had the pleasure of seeing Montevecchi both in the original production and recently, in a concert version at 54Below. The passion, joy, hope, and disbelief with which she invests the song continues to be visceral, perhaps even more so now. Watch for her own show at 54Below in February. The artist delivers. And she’s fun!

“There aren’t many ballads that deal lyrically and existentially with our state in the world” is Ross’s introduction to “Adrift On a Star” (E.Y. Harburg/Jacques Offenbach from The Happiest Girl in the World.) It’s a slow, delicate waltz. “Kiss Her Now” (Jerry Herman from Dear World) emerges from the hush: Before you half remember what her smile was like,/Before you half recall the day you found her,/Kiss her now, while she’s young, Kiss her now, while she’s yours...literally evoking sighs. Ross’s vocals are deceptively simple. He communicates the authentic essence of a song as if sitting inside looking out.

Steve Ross is a master uncomfortable with laurels, ever enriching music.

Join Ross for the simply wonderful “Mischa, Marlene and Me” at the Neue Galerie on East 86th Street October 1 and 8, 2015.

Birdland, NYC 

Steve RosssWhen I think about writing a review about Steve Ross, it’s akin to writing a review for Marilyn Maye. Now that I’ve used every superlative and adjective known to mankind, what can I say?

He’s always a Prince . . . Steve Ross, is the acknowledged Prince of Cabaret, but has taken on an additional title in many a cabaret aficionado’s book . . . Prince of Perfection!

In his latest elegant and sophisticated interpretation at Birdland on July 27th, Mr. Ross, once again, proved why he will never relinquish his much deserved crown as he spent 90 minutes at the piano giving bountiful pleasure to a packed house on a trip up and down the Great White Way beginning with an obscure tune from Lovely Ladies, Kind Gentlemen (Underwood/Freeman) “Call Me Back” (call me flash in the pan, trash in the can but . . . Call Me Back), opening a night of joyful songs from Cole Porter patter (“Nobody’s Chasing Me” from Out of This World 1950) to delicious Gershwin (Sweet and Low-Down, Fascinating Rhythm, Soon) and more.

The always haunting refrains of Kurt Weill – “Here I’ll Stay” (music by Alan Jay Lerner from Love Life 1948) was juxtaposed with a novelty written in 1943 with Ogden Nash lyrics from One Touch of Venus – “How Much I Love You” – love you more than a wasp can sting, more than a grapefruit squirts . . . (talk about patter words!)

Bob Merrill’s enticingly lovely 1961 Carnival produced some of the most luscious songs including “Mira” and “Always You,” enhanced by the grandeur of sound and style of Mr. Ross. At one point, I thought Rudy Vallee had been reincarnated for the occasion.

There were so many highlights but one that immediately comes to mind is Yip Harburg/Jacques Offenbach’s 1961 poignant ballad “Adrift On A Star” from The Happiest Girl in the World.

A well thought out pairing of Jerry Herman’s “Kiss Her Now (Dear World-1968) and Kander & Ebb’s “Nowadays (Chicago – 1975) was filled with wondrous piano swirls.

No show is ever complete without a Sondheim tune that included “Buddy’s Blues” from Follies 1971, leading into the introduction of guest artist, Lilliane Montevecchi looking svelte and sexy as they dueted on Lerner & Loewe’s 1973 “I Remember It Well” (Gigi), then giving the very dramatic Ms. Montevecchi her moment in the spotlight performing “Bonjour, Amour,” reprising her Broadway role from Maury Yeston’s 1989 Grand Hotel.

More fun and novelty patter was in store with “Unrequited Lover’s March”(New Faces of 1968, Ronny Graham) followed by some of the most romantic songs ever written “Falling In Love With Love (The Boys From Syracuse – Rodgers & Hart, 1938); “All The Things You Are “(Very Warm For May, Hammerstein/Kern – 1939); “My Heart Is So Full of You” (Most Happy Fella, Loesser 1956) – each reinterpreted with a magic that only a Prince can bring to an entrancing, enthralling evening of song.

Yes, we did call him back for more as the evening came to a close all to soon.

Accompanying on bass was Jesse Bielenberg.

The audience read like a who’s who of Broadway including Joan Copeland, Lee Roy Reams, Joe Sirola and more.

Photo by Russ Weatherford

Birdland, NYC 

Steve Ross’s most recent show at Birdland shared a collection of his favorites, past and present. It included songs by Cole Porter, Noël Coward (nobody interprets these more authentically), and “Russia’s greatest export” Irving Berlin, as well as a sumptuous musical medley of Piaf songs, a number written for Eddie Cantor (trust Ross to unearth little gems), and a handful of more contemporary selections. Ross continues to define the word “brio.”

Through some kind of alchemy, he makes even that which is well known sound fresh. In a group of what he calls “people who are, how shall I say this, riddled with sophistication,” those familiar with classic material, the artist both elicits laughter and stills our hearts.

Part of this is sensitive comprehension of both lyrics and, more elusively, style. (Ross is an old soul.) Part is the excellence and originality of textural piano arrangements which embellish surely, but, subtly, and their adroit execution. Part is the infectious ardor with which he communicates, never, like Bobby Short, going over the top.

Opening with two by Berlin, Ross conjures Busby Berkeley production numbers. Next, is the Cantor ditty, “Hungry Women” (Milton Ager/Jack Yellen from Florenz Ziegfeld’s Whoopee ): “I feed ’em and weep/They never eat cheap….” He has a way with comic timing best described as “droll,” a lost sensibility. More Berlin includes a rendition of “I Love a Piano” which, Ross quips, was “written for me in 1915.” Several classical themes are embedded. “17 years of piano lessons and that’s all that’s left. I think it’s tragic.” Not.

The gift of being droll is further epitomized by “And Her Mother Came, Too” (Dion Titheradge/Ivor Novello) and “The Tale of the Oyster” (Porter), perhaps the only song that marries social climbing and fine dining. These require “aplomb,” another term I rarely use.

A trio of ‘60s/’70s songs features “99 Miles from L.A.” (Hal David/Albert Hammond), which I’d never thought anything more than pedestrian (no joke intended). Here, it’s almost tumultuous, heated by anticipation. The pianist’s right hand adds unexpected undercurrent.

And then there’s the waltzy “Time in a Bottle” (Jim Croce) which slows like a wind-up victrola, then quickens to the crank of an unseen hand.

Choices from the oeuvre of Fred Astaire arrive tart, besotted, or dancey—from the sumptuous, ballroom “(You’d Be So) Easy to Love” and “Cheek to Cheek” to a soft shoe “They Can’t Take That Away from Me,” during which one can practically hear the shhhhh of sand beneath feet.

His show recipe often places the mischievous after the stunning or vice versa. Several exhilarating Porters precede dark, galvanic selections from the artist’s Café Sabarsky show Mischa, Marlene, and Me: “(Don’t Put Your Daughter on the Stage) Mrs. Worthington” (Coward) is followed by the author’s “I’ll See You Again,” an immensely moving performance during which Ross’s tenor rends the heart; the jaunty “I Love a Piano” is tailgated by an interpretation of “What’ll I Do?” (also Berlin) which is wistful to the raw bone.

We’ve been in the company of a virtuoso.

CHARMS AND ENLIGHTENS AT CAFÉ SABARSKY

Mischa, Marlene and Me

The Neue Galerie

Attending a multilingual performance at Café Sabarsky in The Neue Galerie (86th Street and Fifth Avenue) is like stepping back in time. The room speaks to an era of higher refinement, not stuffy, but encouraging pedigree and brio. Few artists epitomize this more than celebrated cabaret veteran singer/pianist Steve Ross (recent recipient of a "Lifetime Achievement Award" from MAC), whose fascinating and emotionally translucent shows here never fail to enlighten and entertain.

Last Thursday evening, Ross offered a show called Mischa, Marlene, and Me. Mischa refers to Russian born composer Mischa Spoliansky (left in photo, bottom) who emigrated to Berlin where he wrote popular songs/literary cabaret (in a club established by Max Reinhardt), and then to London where he became a successful film composer. Marlene is la Dietrich. It was Spoliansky who, after a bad audition in Berlin, made young Marlene lower octaves to what we now recognize as her iconic sound. She was discovered, singing in one of Spoliansky's shows, by Josef von Sternberg then searching for his lead actress in The Blue Angel. A third contributor to/inspiration for this evening, we're informed, is The Comedian Harmonists*, an all male, close harmony group that was internationally popular between 1928-1934 before those among them who were Jewish had to flee.

Between Ross's mellifluous narrative, he sings (and plays) songs in English, German and a smattering of French, most of which are unfamiliar. A jaunty "Lola" ("They call her naughty Lola/Her little pianola/Is busy night and day. . . ") slows as if playing on a wind-up Victrola, then segues into "Falling in Love Again." Rarely heard without kitchy interpretation, this rendition of one of Dietrich's signature songs is filled with exhaustion and ennui (Friedrich Hollander/ English lyrics Frank Eyton). Ross has a gift for eschewing the more common, long distance view in favor of presenting material as it might've been performed then. He "gets" history and context.

The larky, dark "It's All a Swindle" (Mischa Spoliansky/English lyric Jeremy Lawrence), during which it's easy to imagine a tap line, is so perfectly entwined with John Kander/Fred Ebb's "Money, Money" (from Cabaret) one might assume they were both written in the '30s. Keeping it light, Ross then gives us The Harmonists' "When Yuba Plays the Rumba on the Tuba" (Herman Hupfeld) from 1930's The Little Show. "Down in Havana there's a funny-looking boob-a/He plays the rumba round the tuba down in Cuba . . . With his oompah-oompah-oompah/They prefer it to the booba-doopa-doopa . . . " This kind of thing has to be delivered deadpan--and is, every tongue twisting word of it, even double time. Accompaniment is infectious.

"Ooh-la-la!" (Walter Jurmann/ Desmond Carter) made its way to England where it was popularized by Jack Buchanan, the British Fred Astaire. It's pure music hall, a bit of "ta-ra-ra boom-de-ay" and a bit of ersatz can-can. Ross sings in piquant English, Franglais and French. A hoot. "Red Hot Annabelle" (Mischa Spoliansky/ Desmond Carter), used in the 1939 film Over the Moon, adds sophistication to spirit with lyrics worthy of Cole Porter. "If I'd written the rhymes ecstasy/vexed ta see/all the boys crane their necks ta see, I'd given myself a day off," quips Ross.

One of the most beautiful songs of the evening is "Midnight" (Mischa Spoliansky/Michael Steffan.) A shadowy, wistful waltz, the tune is an evocative ode what was then lost. " . . . One final dance, not even the chance to know your name . . . Slowly I return to one more gin/drawing in the midnight that's now Berlin . . . " When the vocal goes up an octave, Ross sits straighter on the piano bench and his eyebrows rise. Unlike most tenors, there's no unwarranted brightness, no loss of control. A flicker of strain reflects the bruising lyric without cracking.

In 1979, years after her farewell tour, Dietrich was lured back to the screen by David Bowie's film Just a Gigolo, which took place in post World War I Berlin. She sang the title song on the recording. Ross has performed it before, though perhaps never so appropriately enmeshed. No contemporary artist does it better. Though objectively melancholy, the number is presented with a little smile, a little shrug. Like Chaplin's little tramp, the gigolo accepts his fate for good and poor. A gem.

"Just as Alfred Hitchcock always does a cameo, I always include a Cole Porter song," Ross tells us. "I'm in luck because Marlene sang this in Hitchcock's Stage Fright." "Laziest Gal in Town" has a deft, insinuating ragtime feel. "She turns him down . . . waaayyy down." The song raises its chin, swivels its hips, lowers its eyes. None of this is overt. With "Good Night" (Paul Abraham/English lyric Adrian Ross), we leave the resolute style, burnished elegance, and grisly decadence of an era that lives on in art as well as infamy.

Steve Ross's respectful, redolent proxy and superb musicianship is an oasis.

*Harmony, a musical about the Comedian Harmonists, music--Barry Manilow, book and lyrics--Bruce Sussman, premiered at the La Jolla Playhouse in the fall of 1997 and played the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles early 2014.

Steve Ross and Karen Oberlin

The Crazy Coqs, Brasserie Zédel

Piccadilly Circus, London

Gorgeous in gold, the sparkly, sequinned Karen Oberlin, every inch the classy blonde that Ginger Rogers played to smooth, sophisticated Fred Astaire in their ten-movie career as the 1930s dance darlings of Depression-era America, provides the wow factor to cabaret legend Steve Ross’ annual visit to the Crazy Coqs.

It is an inspired idea for this engaging duo, clearly on the same musical wavelength, to team up for this tribute to Fred and Ginger in a show that has already enjoyed a much-lauded outing at Manhattan’s plush 54 Below nightspot.

Ross, a 55-year cabaret veteran and longtime disciple of Astaire’s timing and style, lovingly performs songs like ‘Puttin’ On the Ritz’ and ‘Steppin’ Out With My Baby’ that have meant so much to him down the years.

As Astaire’s voice played second fiddle to his extraordinary dancing, so it is with Ross, whose virtuosity on the piano and unmatched repertoire of, and passion for, the Great American Songbook turn a pleasing but fairly average set of pipes into something so much more.

So while Oberlin flirts winningly through the audience with the sexy ‘I’ll Be Hard to Handle’ (from Roberta, the 1935 film that gave us the better-known ‘I Won’t Dance’), it is Ross, New York’s crown prince of cabaret, who earns the warmest applause of the evening with his thrilling piano-only version of ‘Begin the Beguine’.

The inclusion of the Cole Porter classic in this form is justified here because Astaire and Eleanor Powell (who became Fred’s co-star a year after he split with Ginger) danced so memorably to an instrumental version of it in The Broadway Melody of 1940.

Astaire and Rogers made nine movies together between 1933 and 1939, with Top Hat (1935) and Swing Time the following year, which spawned the Oscar-winning song ‘The Way You Look Tonight’ (Dorothy Fields-Jerome Kern), best remembered for the chemistry of their dancing, before reuniting ten years later for a tenth, The Barkleys of Broadway, the only film of theirs made in colour.

‘The Way You Look Tonight’ wasn’t the only Oscar song associated with the pair because two years earlier ‘The Continental’ from The Gay Divorcee was similarly garlanded. Ross and Oberlin’s take on both is part of a 75-minute joyride, the former as part of a mash-up from Swing Time that also features ‘A Fine Romance’ and ‘Pick Yourself Up’.

Two encores, Irving Berlin’s ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance’ (from Follow the Fleet) and George Gershwin’s ‘’S Wonderful’ (Astaire with Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face), send everyone home with a smile on their faces.

Rogers, better known as an actress and dancer, wasn’t the greatest singer of all time, but at least it is her voice you hear in those timelessly elegant black-and-white movies that helped raise spirits after the Great Depression, whereas her dance contemporaries Cyd Charisse and Powell generally needed to be dubbed.

Oberlin shows what Rogers could do long before her Astaire period when she sings ‘Embraceable You’ and ‘But Not For Me’, two memorable songs from Girl Crazy, the 1930 Gershwins musical she did with the debuting Ethel Merman.

The show turned the 19-year-old Ginger into an overnight star and paved the way for that never-to-be-forgotten partnership which entranced the world. Now Ross and Oberlin are seeing to it that, 80 years on, their songs stay on the map for a different generation.

One wonders, however, when the knowledgeable and engaging Ross finally shuts the lid on his immaculate piano who will keep alive and carry the torch for a world and lifestyle that no longer exist.

Steve Ross and Karen Oberlin

The Crazy Coqs, Brasserie Zédel

Piccadilly Circus, London

Karen Oberlin was last seen at The Crazy Coqs a year ago when she presented her sparkling tribute to Harold Arlen and ‘Yip’ Harburg, while Steve Ross is well known to cabaret enthusiasts as a master of popular song, a splendidly versatile vocalist and a superb pianist. Ross has presented countless programmes featuring the great songwriters, but for this latest intriguing evening the selections are numbers introduced or identified with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Irving Berlin said that he would rather hear Astaire sing than any other male vocalist (Alice Faye was his favourite female singer). Berlin is well represented here, along with Jerome Kern, Cole Porter and the Gershwin brothers. Only Rodgers & Hart failed to score an Astaire-Rogers movie. Though close to thirty songs are featured in the act, one could name around thirty more that might have been included.

Evergreens – ‘Cheek to cheek’, ‘Night and day‘, ‘The way you look tonight’, ‘I won’t dance’ – are given fine treatment by Oberlin and Ross, but there is also a good share of less expected material associated with Fred and Ginger such as Berlin’s delightful ‘Syncopated walk’ that Vernon and Irene Castle pranced to in Watch Your Step and ‘Embraceable you’, introduced by Rogers (somewhat inaudibly by most accounts) in the Gershwin musical Girl Crazy. Oberlin has the rarest number, Oscar Levant and Dorothy Fields’s ‘Don’t mention love to me’, from a minor RKO movie, In Person, and she has fun with one of the lesser known songs from Roberta, ‘I’ll be hard to handle’. Ross, never happier than when performing Cole Porter, warmly caresses the rueful ballad, ‘After you, who?’ from the stage version of The Gay Divorce, and solos on piano for a rapturous account of ‘Begin the beguine’.

Oberlin and Ross team particularly well when trading humorous quips – a partly spoken ‘Let’s call the whole thing off’ is a treat – and there are some humorous anecdotes as well as some pithy documentation – when Rogers made her Broadway debut in Girl Crazy, Astaire was the choreographer for ‘Embraceable you’. There are also some rarely heard lyrics – in ‘But not for me’ Oberlin resurrects the little heard concluding couplet, “Love ain’t done right by Nell, however, what the hell!”. Ross reminds us that ‘I guess I’ll have to change my plan’ was considered shocking when written (for the 1929 revue, The Little Show) because of the line, “Why did I buy those blue pajamas before the big affair began?”. It was banned on radio. Oberlin gets chuckles with her Pig Latin slang version of ‘We’re in the Money’, which Rogers did in Gold Diggers of 1933.

Oberlin and Ross remind us of ‘The Carioca’ and ‘The Continental’, the big production numbers, rarely heard today, from the first two films Astaire and Rogers made together, Flying Down to Rio and The Gay Divorcee. The voices of Ross and Oberlin blend as harmoniously as did the feet of Astaire and Rogers, and their show can be summed up in the title of their final encore: ‘S’wonderful!’.

Steve Ross and Karen Oberlin - Get the Hook!

I’m not talking about yanking someone off stage, I loved this show. However I was almost responsible for a wardrobe malfunction, and even though Karen is great to look at and it would have been an interesting photo op I’m glad it was not. Karen changes dresses mid way through the show and I happened to be waiting for the next great pic when she asked me to help zip up her dress. I guess she thought I would be adept at the maneuver because of my career in the garment center. What she didn’t know was that I’m able to get the zipper up but as my wife Eda will tell you, I can never manage the hook to the lock it in. Luckily as Steve Ross was about to call her on stage I asked a professional from the 54 Below staff to assist and the show continued.

I had a hard time believing Steve Ross was not Fred Astaire even though the only movement of Steve’s feet were on the pedals of the piano. Steve is an icon of Cabaret, his piano stylings and vocals, his understanding of the Great American Songbook’s performers and composers never fail to produce one of the most exceptional cabaret experiences you can have. Pair him up with the wonderful voice, acting and musicality of Karen Oberlin and you get something that is more than Astaire and Rogers albeit without dancing. This show is smart, sophisticated, romantic, and for the first time the sensual red decor of 54 Below gave way to the wonderful black and white visions and sounds of those movies that are so much a part of our music history.

Steve Ross and Karen Oberlin

In Tribute to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers at 54 Below

Steve Ross and Karen Oberlin are the perfect pair to celebrate the music of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and, as was said about Fred and Ginger, Ross gave Oberlin class and she gave him sex appeal. The pair was a treat to watch interacting and their voices blended beautifully together. They told the story of Astaire and Rogers with charm and wit. Both performers were at the top of their game and performed seamlessly together.

The show featured many of the songs by Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, George and Ira Gershwin and Jerome Kern that Astaire and Rogers performed together, but also included songs that each had introduced outside of the nine films they made together. Ross’s “After You, Who?” and “My Shining Hour” were beautifully presented. Oberlinreminded us that Rogers introduced both “Embraceable You” and “But Not for Me” in Girl Crazy. Oberlin sang a hilarious “We’re in the Money” in Pig Latin, and Ross displayed his virtuosity on the piano with “Begin the Beguine.” Their duets were a delight—especially memorable were “Cheek to Cheek,” performed with Oberlin sitting at the piano, and the closing number, “They Can’t Take That Away from Me.”

Steve Ross and Karen Oberlin Ooze Charm, Class, and Chemistry

In Tribute to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers at 54 Below

Steve Ross and Karen OberlinWhenever I attend a big event of the International Al Jolson Society, which usually consists of about 100 people out of the nearly 1,000-member organization, I probably bring the average age of the group down by about 10 years. And since I was born when Dwight Eisenhower was President that should tell you something about how long it's been since the heyday of Al Jolson, who died in 1950. Jolson was not only the greatest Broadway musical performer at the beginning of the 20th century, he was the star of the first talking film, The Jazz Singer, which in just 13 years will celebrate its 100th anniversary. To paraphrase a line in a song from the musical 1776, "Will anybody care?" By 2027, will the only people who know about the iconic Al Jolson be music and film historians, entertainment archeologists, and whatever fanatics are left in the Jolson Society? Will there be any "younger" folks coming along to keep the name and memory of Al Jolson alive?

Jolson isn't the only legendary American entertainer or composer whose legacy could evaporate over time unless new generations of singers and musicians appreciate them enough to perform their work. I thought about this Thursday night as I watched two of New York's best cabaret performers--Steve Ross and Karen Oberlin--pay homage to the music and movies associated with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, arguably one of the greatest dance partnerships ever captured on film. Astaire and Rogers first appeared together on a movie screen in 1933 (they were supporting actors in Flying Down to Rio). Will we still be celebrating them in the year 2033? And, by extension, will entertainers--cabaret or otherwise--still be singing the George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, and Dorothy Fields songs Astaire and Rogers helped turn into standards of the Great American Songbook (GAS)?

If Ross and Oberlin have anything to say about it (or in this case, sing about it), the dancing and singing duo will live forever. Their recent tribute at 54 Below, Cheek to Cheek, was a show oozing charm, class, charisma, and chemistry, but most of all they conveyed their love for these legendary performers and the classic tunes associated with them.

Ross and Oberlin were an ideal partnership for this particular cabaret dance, as both have recently staged individual tribute shows to the icons. Since 2010, Ross' Putting On the Ritz Astaire set has played to rave reviews around the country, while Oberlin wowed audiences during two performances of a Ginger Rogers Century program in Boston in 2011. Combining the musically erudite piano man Ross and his Astaire-like style, with the vocally luscious Oberlin and her Rogers-like charm, seemed to be a match made in New York cabaret heaven. With savvy guidance from their director Walter Willison (and subtle musical support on bass from Jesse Bielenberg), Ross and Oberlin covered all or parts of 28 songs from eight out the 10 films the dancing duo starred in together (overall, there were songs from 15 films and one Broadway show), and included some cool historical anecdotes and personal asides, yet they still managed to keep the show moving briskly along like Astaire and Rogers gliding across a dance floor.

The duo looked deliciously retro as they took the stage; Ross in a black tux (sans the top hat, white tie and tails), Oberlin in a form-fitting gold sequent gown, and they opened with a sprightly "I Won't Dance" (Jerome Kern, Dorothy Fields) from the 1935 film Roberta, then segued into duets on Irving Berlin's "Isn't This a Lovely Day" (from Top Hat, 1935) and George and Ira Gershwin's jaunty "Let's Call The Whole Thing Off" (from Shall We Dance, 1937). Ross' first solo came from an Astaire film without Rogers, 1953's The Band Wagon. On his rendition of "I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan," Ross again proved that nobody else in cabaret is as ideal a fit for conjuring Fred Astaire's relaxed crooning. He may no longer possess powerful pipes, but Ross can deliver a Berlin, Gershwin or Porter lyric with the best of them. And while he may not regularly play the Café Carlyle, in style, substance, and dedication to the GAS, Ross is the closest thing cabaret now has to the late and legendary Bobby Short.

Speaking of perfect fits, with her success at delivering classic songs connected with Rogers and Doris Day, Oberlin has cornered the cabaret market on homages to blonde, beautiful, singing film legends. Her opening solo salvos included a sweet and light medley of two songs from Rogers' star turn in the 1930 Broadway musical, Girl Crazy, the George and Ira Gershwin standards, "Embraceable You" and "But Not For Me." Later, during a fun version of "We're In the Money" (from the 1933 Busby Berkley film Golddiggers of 1933), Oberlin related how Rogers' played with the original lyric and then delivered the sexiest bit of Pig Latin you'll ever hear in a cabaret show. But her best solo section came at the show's midpoint when she sensually slinked through the audience on "I'll Be Hard to Handle" (from Roberta, and which was also part of Oberlin's 2012 Songs of Daring Dames show), then adroitly mounted the piano for a lilting "I'll String Along With You" (from the 1934 film starring Rogers and Dick Powell, Twenty Million Sweethearts, and a song Oberlin performs on her recent CD with guitarist Sean Harkness, A Wish), and followed with the intense Dorothy Fields/Oscar Levant ballad, "Don't Mention Love To Me" (from the 1935 Rogers film sans Astaire, In Person).

But the "Wow" moment of the show came next and it was, ironically, on an instrumental only and on a song not from an Astaire/Rogers film. Ross' piano arrangement of Cole Porter's classic, "Begin the Beguine" (from Broadway Melody of 1940, in which Eleanor Powell became Astaire's dancing co-star a year after his split from Rogers) was so stirringly cinematic some of the phrases sounded like parts of the score of Lawrence of Arabia. Then on a jazzy mini-mash up of Irving Berlin songs--"Putting On The Ritz" (Blue Skies, 1946) and "Stepping Out With My Baby" (Easter Parade, 1948)--Ross' fingers floated along the keyboard like an elegant Astaire tap routine.

After a lovely duet of the Harold Arlen/Johnny Mercer ballad, "My Shining Hour" (The Sky's The Limit, 1943, Astaire with Joan Leslie), Oberlin sat next to Ross at the piano, which according to Steve gave "new meaning to the phrase cheek to cheek." Naturally, the duo's delightful finale included that classic Irving Berlin song from Top Hat, connected to Berlin's romantic and deceptively haunting, "Let's Face The Music and Dance" (Follow the Fleet, 1936).

During the 1930s, the films of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, with its transcendent melodies and transformative choreography, provided an escape for tens of millions of Americans dealing with the Great Depression. And for the audience at 54 Below, there couldn't have been a more fitting encore for Ross and Oberlin's wonderful 75-minute nostalgic escape than the Gershwins' "They Can't Take That Away From Me" from Shall We Dance. Let's hope they'll never take those movies and that music away from us. Perhaps we'll need another generation of entertainers like Steve Ross and Karen Oberlin to keep it all alive.

Steve Ross and Karen Oberlin sing the songs of Astaire and Rogers

54 Below, New York, NY

As affairs go, this foursome is plummy, but without scandal. Karen Oberlin’s tribute to the multitalented Ginger Rogers was showcased at Rogers’ Centennial Celebration, Boston University, while Steve Ross’s highly successful Songs of Fred Astaire (Off Broadway, London, on tour) framed his admiration for that incomparable artist. Neither performer had a partner with whom to explore the legendary relationship. Until now.

With an appropriate excerpt from “I Won’t Dance”, Ross, sporting a wing tip collar and tux and Oberlin swathed in a silver, sequin gown, opine “Isn’t It a Lovely Day?” (to be caught in the rain…) It’s a playful song. They flirt. She mellifluously scats, he executes a terrific piano arrangement in which musical weather becomes a character.

“Like any married couple, we agreed about everything to do with this show,” Oberlin quips. A frothy “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” follows as if a game of tag, you’re it. Later, the celebrants’ wry rapport is manifest with “A Fine Romance.” When they have fun, we have fun.

“Embraceable You” (Girl Crazy), “which put Rogers on the map” was choreographed by Astaire, then working in another show. Oberlin offers it with warmth and restraint. The verse of “But Not For Me”: Don’t want to hear from any cheerful Pollyannas/Who tell me love will find a way, it’s all bananas… sounds like “get off my back.” Even after melody leads, part of the lyric is spoken. Towards the end, one can almost hear a sob. A skillful arc.

Ross’s “I Guess I’ll Have to Change My Plan” is as insouciant a version as can be heard on a contemporary stage. The “blue pajamas” that got this song banned from the airwaves elicits a small “Ah” from this eloquent artist. Inflection is innately pristine. “After You” is lovely and moving from its rhetorical question to the waltzy music box bridge.

An amusing anecdote about Rogers, Darryl Zanuck and cutting up in the chorus has Oberlin delivering a version of “We’re In the Money” (Gold Diggers of 1933) in Pig Latin that even consummate tongue-twister Danny Kaye would admire.

“I’ll Be Hard to Handle,” sung with the lusty brio of a femme fatale, is delivered up front and personal, out among an appreciative audience. Bravo on the lights.

Ross’s piano rendition of “Begin the Beguine” is one of the most evocative you’ll ever hear. Courageously without vocals, the composition is allowed to breathe exposing every bit of sumptuous texture and melody, conjuring Noel and Gertie, Scottie and Zelda, Cole and Linda. The vocal of his tango-influenced “Night and Day” brims with such visceral yearning, I find my breathing slows. Artistically self-demanding, Steve Ross should be pleased.

“Puttin’ On the Ritz,” and “Steppin’ Out with My Baby” elicit tapping feet, bobbing heads and smiles of recognition from a club filled with fans. “Only When You’re in My Arms” is one of several numbers featuring jaunty harmony. And, yes, we’re treated to a smidgen of “The Continental.” Both performers can sell a ballad. Ross’s are intimate while Oberlin wants to share. Ross wears wit and cynicism like second skin. Oberlin, who’s experienced at playing the ingénue, clearly finds humor a cherry on top.

Patter is minimal and informative. Each artist has a solo segment which eschews otherwise celebrated collaboration. An increase of duets would add to freshness and appeal.

Cheek to Cheek is charming, swanky, and playful with a dash of vinegar.

Steve Ross and Karen Oberlin, Cheek to CheekSteve Ross and Karen Oberlin sing the songs of Astaire and Rogers

54 Below, New York, NY

Steve Ross has met his match—at least in the Fred and Ginger sense of the word. Ross and Karen Oberlin appeared at 54 Below, June 11th in an evening called Astaire and Rogers: Cheek to Cheek. Karen Oberlin is blonde, beautiful and sings like a dream. The inimitable, dapper and charming Steve Ross, on stage with blonde and beautiful Karen Oberlin, may appear like a central caster’s dream; but once they duet their way through the beginning: Cheek to Cheek, I Won’t Dance, and Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off, it’s clear that they are vocally perfect as well. The direction by Walter Willison is smart and subtle allowing each artist ample space to perform separately as well as together so that the audience gets the best of all worlds.

Steve Ross is famous for his sensitive and unique interpretation of a lyric and in the song I Guess I’ll Have to Change My Plan (Dietz & Schwartz), he brought soul and jazz to the mix as well. In the song After You (Cole Porter), dear Mr. Ross brought an incisive sweetness to a song not often heard. “After you, who could I love? After you, why should I take the time to try, For who else could qualify After you, who?”

Karen Oberlin provided an elegant sass and humor to the Ginger Rogers side of the duo: I’ll String Along with You, Don’t Mention Love to Me (Dorothy Fields & Oscar Levant) “I’m overpowered but I’m not a coward…” both sung seated at the piano; and I’ll Be Hard to Handle, sung while moving through the audience, were all performed with sexy confidence and gorgeous style.

Steve then treated the audience to a perfect slice of musical heaven: Begin the Beguine, Puttin’ on the Ritz, Stepping Out with My Baby, and Night and Day.

He brought Karen back to the stage with My Shining Hour (Mercer, Arlen)—a very romantic way to reintroduce a partner. They sat at the piano together for Syncopated Walk, Only When You’re in My Arms, You’re Here and I’m Here, which added a casual intimacy to the evening so perfect for Astaire and Rogers.

Are you getting the feeling you should see them? Yes! They will be back Thursday July 17th at 7:00pm. Tap shoes optional.

Birdland, New York

March 17, 2014

What better way to spend St. Patrick’s Day than listening to Steve Ross sing the songs of Cole Porter! When one thinks of Porter, words like class, elegance and wit spring to mind. Ross conjures up a similar word portrait for his performances. Put them together, and Birdland suddenly becomes an intimate boîte recalling the days of Café Society.

In about an hour and a half, the packed house was treated to over two-dozen Porter songs, some familiar and some obscure, but all immaculately performed by Ross and bassist Steve Doyle, with occasional contributions from vocalist Klea Blackhurst.

The program opened with a nicely chosen medley of “Ev’rything I Love,” “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To” and “You’re the Top.”

One thing about performing a program of Porter songs is the expansive catalog of wonderful material that leaves the audience wondering which ones will be chosen for the occasion. Ross gave the first taste of his deep knowledge of the Porter oeuvre when he called upon Blackhurst to bring her ukulele on stage to accompany him on “When the Summer Moon Comes ‘Long,” Porter’s first published song written in 1909 when he was a freshman at Yale College.

Ross wisely chose to include a few Porter gems that are too often overlooked like “I’m I Love Again,” and the touching “After You Who.”

Naturally, ample attention was paid to the strong bond between Porter and Paris. This segment opened with a pair of rarities, “Who Said Gay Paree” and “You Don’t Know Paree.” There followed “Give Him the Oo-La-La,” and a medley of C’est Magnifique” and “I Love Paris.” Finally, Ross gave “Can-Can” a winningly robust reading that captured the cleverness of Porter’s word play.

Blackhurst has frequently performed shows dedicated to the songs associated with Ethel Merman, a Porter favorite. This time out, she found every nuance in the lyrics of “Make It Another Old-Fashioned, Please,” and joined with Ross to give delightful life to “It’s De-Lovely.”

Porter was also strongly linked with Manhattan, and Ross emphasized this with a pair of “New York” songs, “Take Me Back to Manhattan and “I Happen to Like New York.”

Probably the most performed and popular of the many Porter excursions into the land of double entendre is “Let’s Do It,” a song that has found many others adding their own verses. Ross augmented Porter’s lyrics by some of those created by Porter’s English peer, Nöel Coward.

When called back for one last song, Ross opted for the last song that Porter had on the Hit Parade, “True Love” from my favorite of all film musicals, High Society.

Ross always adds a special dimension to his performances with his witty and informative commentary between selections. His remarks are always full of insight augmented by his sophisticated sense of humor.

There is no doubt that Porter would have appreciated the way that Steve Ross continues to breathe fresh life into his songs, and sets them into a context that emphasizes just how special they remain to this day. The only regret is that the show did not go on and on to present the scores of additional superb songs that were not included in this program. That is a good reason to bring Ross back for another round or more of Porter at Birdland.

Birdland, New York

March 17, 2014

Still the “Crown Prince of Cabaret,” Steve Ross debuted on St. Patrick’s Day at Birdland, “the jazz corner of the world.” With a salute to Cole Porter, that dapper aristocrat of song, he packed the house with Ross fans, Porterphiles and cabaret literati and proved that after 54 years in the biz, he is better than ever.

Ross was trim and dapper in a deep green velvet smoking jacket. This was not so much a nod to the patron saint of the Emerald Isle as the fact that the jacket, courtesy of the Noel Coward Society, had once belonged to Noel Coward. Fitting into the Coward vein, Ross sang “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” and mentioned that after Coward visited a Swiss clinic for cosmetic sheep gland injections and was asked how he felt, Coward replied, “I’ve got ewe under my skin.”

This show was all Cole Porter, the mix of witty images with passion of “Let’s Do It,” the beautifully crafted “After You, Who?” (from Gay Divorce) and familiar tunes like “Night and Day” from the same show. Some less well-known included a tune Porter wrote in 1909, while a freshman at Yale, “When the Summer Moon Comes ‘Long,” already hinting at his breezy elegance.

He was accompanied on ukelele by special guest, Klea Blackhurst, famed for her Ethel Merman pipes. She later performed a song of disillusion from Panama Hattie, “Make it Another Old Fashioned, Please.”

Porter’s full-blown sophistication was evidenced in a romantic travelogue beginning with the soaring “Ridin’ High,” to wallowing “Down In the Depths (on the 90th floor),” a torch song with ardent lines like “I’m deserted and depressed/ In my regal eagle nest.” (Both were from Red, Hot and Blue!). The triptych wound up with Jubilee’s insouciant “Just One of those Things.”

From the vast Porter songbook, Ross included the high-flying Paris years in a medley including one of the favorite list songs, “Can-Can.” His encore included another list song, “Let’s Do It.” The second city salute went, of course, to Manhattan and after his outstanding rendition of the plaintive “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye,” Ross decided on “Take Me Back to Manhattan,” a tune Porter apparently dashed off while killing time in Philadelphia during try-outs of The New Yorkers. From that show, Ross also sang, “I Happen to Like New York,” catchy with its triple rhymes.

There is no danger of missing even the most racing, twisted Porter lyrics and rhymes since Ross sings with crystalline preciseness, placing stress on especially witty or revealing words. “Anything Goes” was a master class in delivery. Ross is a master class himself on Cole Porter and every other eloquent songwriter. His knowledge of the canon is authoritative and his piano accompaniment is vivid and determined.

Birdland is a “de-lovely” venue for Steve Ross and in this Cole Porter performance; he was “Ridin’ High” and so was his audience.

Birdland, New York

March 17, 2014

Cole Porter is necessary to cabaret singers the way Shakespeare seems requisite to any serious actor. Every artist past his/her early twenties interprets Porter’s wide range of meticulously articulated material. Why, then, is Birdland packed to the gills this Monday night for Ridin’ High, yet another evening of the master’s well-plumbed work? Because nobody does it better than Steve Ross.

Porter is witty, not funny; sophisticated, not exclusive; bittersweet, not tragic; carefree, not slight... Perhaps no artist since Leslie “Hutch” Hutchinson has had such intuitive rapport with this material, though Bobby Short gave it a run for its money until later years when shrill insistence replaced finesse.

Ross makes Porter’s oeuvre sound as fresh as it must have when first heard. His comprehension of historical context and empathy with the writer’s own backstory adds potency. The artist is elegantly restrained even when emphatic; innuendo is deft, never heavy handed. He appreciatively savors every lyric, skillful with a well-placed pause. Musical arrangements are imaginatively layered, but true to the composer’s intent. Songs link together seamlessly, sprinkled with brief, wry patter.

Ridin’ High is an evening of Porter on Broadway “with a few minor detours.” We hear “I Get a Kick Out of You” and “Anything Goes” from one of five musicals Porter wrote for Ethel Merman. The first is an up-tempo glide in chiffon and marabou, the second conjures a line of kicking chorines. Multiple verses (in which Porter excelled) are each approached a little differently, highlighting the author’s cleverness.

William Gaxton, the original Billy Crocker in Anything Goes, found one song too rangey for his baritone. The number was cut. Years later, “Easy to Love” landed in the film Born to Dance “where it was performed by that other well-known baritone, Jimmy Stewart.” Ross’s

version is conversational. He and accomplished bassist Steve Doyle create the lush illusion of a small orchestra. Arpeggios rise, then gently skibble down.

“We think of moon, June, spoon as laughable clichés now, but at one point...” Ross introduces 1909’s “When the Summer Moon Comes ’Long.” The first Porter song of which we have a record was written while he was a student at Yale. Vocalist Klea Blackhurst is coaxed from the audience, ukulele in hand. A bubbly duet ensues: “First select a small canoe/Where there’s only room for two/You’ll love her and she’ll love you/You could never get in wrong...You can hold her fold her tight/When the summer moon comes ‘long.” Later, Blackhurst returns for a Mermanesque “Make It Another Old Fashioned, Please” and to duet on the effervescent “It’s De-Lovely.”

A suite of Paris songs includes: the exuberant “Can-Can” (replete with rolled Rs); the saucy “Give Him the Ooh-La-La,” throughout which Steve Doyle (on bass) grins broadly; and a heart-wrenching “You Don’t Know Paree.” Ross is equally adept in gleeful, high lather as he is with resigned heartache.

Another suite tells a short story: Our hero begins “Ridin’ High” in le jazz hot mode, then, presumably rejected, withdraws “Down in the Depths (on the 90th Floor),” and finally determines to move on, acknowledging “Just One of Those Things” (goosed by a swell bass solo).

Two numbers from 1930's The New Yorkers brims with sincerity. Ross has lived here for 44 years. Every phrase comes infectiously from the heart. Unwilling to let the entertainer go, our audience receives two encores. First a playful rendition of “Let's Do It (Let’s Fall in Love),” evoking the pop-pop of laughter like champagne corks and, lastly, a dreamy “True Love” (from High Society) with which the audience is invited to sing along. Many of us do, each with his/her own memories.

Ridin’ High has great charm, an adjective not often employed these days. This is an authoritative performance—entertaining, affecting, and oh so classy.

Crystal Room of the Taj Samudra Hotel, Colombo, Sri Lanka

Wearing a bow tie and a deep green suede jacket originally made for Noel Coward, Steve Ross savours an after concert drink. It’s well earned – he’s just finished playing the Crystal Room at the Taj, where his piano still stands under a ceiling ringed in tiny, starry lights. Bowing out after a set that included classics from Cole Porter, Noel Coward and Frank Sinatra, Steve was enticed back onto the stage by loud calls of “Encore! Encore!” Tongue in cheek he began his last song for the night. “You know I’ve made a shocking discovery, here in Sri Lanka,” he told his audience, and after a well-timed pause delivered his punch line, appropriately set to tune: “Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it. Let’s do it, let’s fall in love!” Laughing and swaying to the music, Steve had his audience right back where he wanted them.

When the show first began, surely half the room was dismayed by the prospect of having Steve’s back – however expressive it might be, as backs go – turned to them. We were forgetting though that this man, dubbed ‘the suavest of all cabaret performers’, has honed his act over close to 50 years on stage. He both positioned himself cleverly and then, at the interlude, had the piano turned around so he then faced the opposite way. It was an intimate performance, relying heavily on engaging his audience through music and conversation.

Steve’s performances are greater than the sum of their parts. He is the first to admit he doesn’t have a ‘big’ voice that hits the high notes and while he plays the piano with real panache and skill, what makes him such a memorable artist is his ability to absorb us – to serenade us, to make us laugh, to evoke a sudden, sharp sense of nostalgia as his voice softens. Each word rings clear – it’s something he says he continues to pay a lot of attention to. “It’s just my big obsession – to make words clear,” he told the Sunday Times in a quick interview after the show. “I couldn’t hit the high notes but I could communicate ideas.”

Steve Steve Rossis a champion of these old classics and as you’d expect, his onstage persona matches his music – he looks utterly at home in his bow tie. Inspired by the golden age of popular American music and the many songs he “learned at my mother’s knee,” he has played at iconic venues around the world including New York’s fabled Algonquin Hotel and Ted Hook’s Backstage in the late 1970s and later the Ritz in London, the Crillon in Paris and the Imperial Hotel Tokyo. The wardrobe and the attitude that accompany cabaret, came naturally, and were cultivated long before he ever made the big time.

“I knew that was going to make me different,” he says, “I always did it even when I was working in salons and bars.” While Steve does enjoy rock and roll, the seventies left him unchanged: still playing his favourite old tunes for select audiences. He has an impeccable sense of the comic and has over the course of his career paid homage to classics from the music hall and rediscovered revue, novelty and point numbers in the company of his audience. That night he had his audience roaring with laughter through his renditions of Milton Ager and Jack Yellen’s ‘Hungry Women’ (“I feed ‘em and weep!”), ‘Don’t Put Your Daughter On The Stage, Mrs. Worthington’and another, harder to trace track with a chorus that declares ‘Dolphins Do it for Fun!’

Steve has always insisted that the real test of a composer’s mettle lies in his or her ability to handle love – and certainly he passes the test himself in his delivery of them. He is unabashedly romantic, delivering beautiful, familiar tracks like ‘I’ve Got You Under my Skin’ (Cole Porter), ‘They Can’t Take That Away from Me’ (George and Ira Gershwin), and (an unexpected choice that still worked very well) Joni Mitchell’s ‘Both Sides Now.’

He delivered these songs and others with wit and style, but Steve designs his song list so that it also inspires more serious consideration. “These songs have been sung hundreds of times, so I know they work,” he says. “They’re all gems but some of them do come to grips with more serious issues. (Earlier he’d drawn our attention to the lyrics of ‘Dancing in the Dark’ with its poignant lines: ‘dancing in the dark till the tune ends/ we’re dancing in the dark and it soon ends/ we’re waltzing in the wonder of why we’re here.) “I want to show what American music is made of,” he says now. “For instance, many of these were written by European writers who came to Hollywood and Broadway from Nazi Germany. They came to America which was a melting pot and they had things to say.”

With the show over, his audience comes pouring out of the doors of the ballroom, many stopping to shake his hand. In between chats with his admirers, we talk a little more about how people seem to respond particularly well to his love songs. “Love is a universal emotion,” he says. “These songs…they’re like a journey back into those times, but the journey is also into your hearts. The emotions don’t change.”

A cabaret of the favourite songs of Steve Ross

The Crazy Coqs, Brasserie Zédel

Piccadilly Circus, London

Steve Ross continues his two-week tenure at The Crazy Coqs with a programme called Through the Years, compiled largely from his favourites of the many songs he has performed. “It could be called a collection of the eclectic”, he says. First and foremost it is a collection of superb standards performed by a master of style and melody. As was evident in the Cole Porter evening the previous week, Ross matures splendidly with age, his voice having acquired extra body and richness. And if it is eclecticism one wants, what about a selection that reaches back to Chopin’s Waltz in B Minor (the second of the Opus 69 set, showing off Ross’s splendid command of the piano) and treats us to Irving Berlin’s ‘Alexander’s ragtime band’ (“102 years old and I hope I wear as well.”) with classics by Gershwin, Rodgers & Hart and Noël Coward alongside selections by Flanders & Swann, Joni Mitchell and John Wallowitch.

Ross has long been able to find choice numbers that have been neglected, and he also provides verses that enhance familiar tunes – the brief, but effective verse to ‘Nevertheless’ was a particular delight, and new material included ‘There will always be’, a rarity by Coward. Ross is particularly generous – over thirty songs in a show running nearly two hours (including interval), and what riches he produces. Included are the classic saloon-singer’s confession that probably touches everyone in the room, Gretchen Cryer and Nancy Ford’s ‘Old friend’, Joni Mitchell’s rueful ballad of self deception, ‘Both sides now’, and one of the most heartbreaking songs of parting, Leonard Bernstein’s ‘Some other time’, from On the Town, omitted from the film version because MGM considered it “too sad”. Ross blends it with the haunting waltz, ‘Till tomorrow’, persuading the audience to join in, which is from Fiorello, arguably the finest score by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick.

Ross skilfully mines the humour of such numbers as ‘Hungry women’ (by Milton Ager and Jack Yellen), sung by Eddie Cantor back in 1928, Irving Berlin’s lament of a dying man, ‘Cohen owes me 97 dollars’, and the amusing ‘I’ve been married’ from a musical of My Man Godfrey by Alan Jay Lerner and Gerard Kenny, left incomplete when Lerner died. Ross dedicates a heartfelt rendition of Coward’s ‘London pride’ to his audience, manages the tricky feat of getting us to join in a chorus of ‘I guess I’ll have to change my plan’, plays the piano for a show-stopping medley of Edith Piaf numbers, and resurrects the gems, ‘My town’, a tuneful George M. Cohan tribute to his beloved New York, and E. Y. Harburg’s lyrics to Offenbach’s ‘Barcarolle’ (The Tales of Hoffmann), titled ‘Adrift on a star’, from the sadly neglected score of the musical The Happiest Girl in the World. For two hours of happiness dedicated to the best of popular song, catch the sublime Steve Ross while you can.

The Crazy Coqs, Brasserie Zédel

Piccadilly Circus, London

Steve Ross almost sheepishly admits that he has been in the cabaret business for 54 years. It seems incredible that so accomplished a musician and vocalist is not more widely known outside the cabaret circuit. Toasted as New York’s Crown Prince of Cabaret by The New York Times, Ross has played many regular gigs in the UK and in fact was the headliner chosen to play the final performances at the popular venue Pizza On the Park in 2010. Ross’ welcome return to the UK as part of the London Festival of Cabaret sees him taking up residence at the Crazy Coqs for two consecutive weeks, opening with Ridin’ High, a tribute to the music and lyrics of Cole Porter.

Opening with a medley including ‘Looking At You’ and ‘You’re the Top’, Ross was faced with a couple of minor sound troubles, swiftly sorted by the team, but he seemed completely unperturbed, throwing in a joke about Ethel Merman and belting the music out without a microphone. This blended seamlessly with a couple of numbers made famous by Merman, namely ‘I Get a Kick Out of You’ and ‘Anything Goes’, which constitute perhaps two of the composer’s most popular hits.

Of course, Merman is really only a fraction of the Porter story and Ross takes his audience on a musical tour of Porter’s career from early days as president of the Yale Glee Club through to his massive successes written for the Broadway stage.

Porter’s occasionally tricky lyrics, although considered unfashionable with lyricists today, were innovative at the time. Ross’ grasp of this language is exemplary and the artist negotiates his way through some veritable tongue-twisters, from his earliest list song, ‘Shooting Box’, written while still at Yale, through to the hilarious ‘Ooh-La-La’ from Porter’s sojourn in Paris.

One of Porter’s best loved tunes and indeed the number which Ross picks out as his personal favorite is ‘Night and Day’, written in 1932. Lyrics aside, which hint of love and not a little obsession, Ross picks up beautifully the haunting nature of the music and the unusual chord changes that thread throughout the piece. Part of Ross’ skill as a cabaret performer is his ability to render as many flashes of drama in the music as there are in the words. This is also the case for Kiss Me, Kate, a medley of which Ross plays to focus on Porter’s versatility of musical style.

‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ and ‘Begin the Beguine’ are cool and sophisticated numbers which have stood the test of time and Ross juxtaposes them gamely with the likes of ‘The Physician’ and ‘The Tale of the Oyster’, which may be less familiar but showcase Porter’s occasionally wacky sense of humour. Ross draws the curtain on Porter’s career with a selection of New York numbers, a city the composer once dominated and epitomised – well, the Upper East Side and Broadway at least. Ross’ choices in Ridin’ High might be impeccable, but it’s the Prince of Cabaret’s wealth of knowledge, engaging delivery and remarkable talent that earned him a couple of well-deserved encores on his opening night.

The Crazy Coqs, Brasserie Zédel

Piccadilly Circus, London

Steve Ross, the “crown prince of cabaret”, is back at The Crazy Coqs, and all is well with the world. The veteran singer and pianist is in better form than ever, which means he’s terrific! His first programme this season is devoted to Cole Porter, with whom Ross has particular affinity. Porter’s witty, urbane lyrics and deeply passionate love-songs are perfectly served by Ross and he continues to discover insights within the ballads and mine fresh humour in the comedy songs.

Note the languorous stretching of the word “so” as he sings the words “You’d be so nice, you’d be paradise to come home to and love” and his touching, wistful approach to ‘Just one of those things’. In best cabaret style, he blends the great perennials (‘Begin the beguine’, ‘Night and day’, ‘I’ve got you under my skin’) with songs that are undeservedly not so well known, such as ‘Everything I love’ (from Let‘s Face It), which was a hit for Glenn Miller in 1941, even rarer numbers like ‘I’ve a shooting box in Scotland’ (1916, the first Porter song to be recorded), and a ditty he wrote while a freshman at college, ‘When the summer moon comes down’.

Ross’s deft handling of Porter’s lyrics result in one overlooking his superb skill as a pianist. Several songs are given gorgeous treatment, notably the haunting ‘Were thine that special face’, from Kiss Me, Kate, to which Ross pays tribute with a medley that includes ‘So in love’ and ‘Wunderbar’. The under-appreciated (at the time) score for Can-Can also gets highlighted, with ‘Allez-vous en’, ‘C’est magnifique’, and ‘I love Paris’ cueing a mention of Porter’s great affection for the city of light, the inspiration for such songs as ‘You don’t know Paree’, ‘Who said gay Paree?’ and ‘Give him the ooh-la-la’.

The anecdotes that pepper Ross’s performances are both humorous and informative. He notes that William Gaxton, male lead of the original Anything Goes, refused to accept ‘Easy to love’ because of its difficult range. Porter took it to MGM, where it became the title song of a movie in which it was sung by James Stewart, who had virtually no range at all. Ross also recounts that when Fred Astaire’s sister Adele left the act to marry, every Broadway producer wanted to sign Astaire. He accepted Porter’s offer of The Gay Divorcee (it was "Divorce" in the UK) after the composer played him not ‘Night and day’ but the less celebrated ‘After you, who?’.

Ross does not neglect Porter’s trademark ‘list’ songs (and how nice to hear the English pronunciation of “Derby” in ‘You’re the top’). One of Ross’s specials, the astoundingly inventive ‘Can-can’, stops the show, and he surprises with some rarely heard choruses for ‘It’s delovely’. He has wicked fun with the myriad medical terms in ‘The physician’, introduced by Gertrude Lawrence in Nymph Errant. From the same show, Ross gives a heartfelt rendition of the affirmative ‘Experiment’.

When Ross announces he will perform his two favourite Porter songs, one wonders how he could choose from such a rich catalogue. I won’t reveal what they are, but I got only one right. This is indeed a succulent feast of popular song at its best. It is hard to imagine anyone doing greater justice to the banquet than Steve Ross.

Original Cast Records

Welcome to the sophistication and very grown-up world of Noël Coward, inhabited by Steve Ross and guests…

(Jeanne Lehman, Lisa Riegel, Edward Hibbert)

Noel Coward: Off the RecordGood things are worth waiting for. If you're a musical theatre aficionado, and those good things are previously unrecorded numbers by one of the giants of musical theatre—Sir Noël Coward—recorded by those who seem born and bred for the assignment, well, it's a belated bounty of bliss! Well steeped in Coward's oeuvre for many years, Steve Ross is the ideal host: presiding at the piano, singing, accompanying himself or his guests (his own arrangements), including chatty, fact-filled spoken introductions. He projects more warmth and sentiment—and reserve—than Coward's own personality projected in his recordings. This is all to the good, not only to avoid the trap of overdoing the arch attitudes or sarcasm, or coming off as a pale version of Coward. The presence of other singers allows for camaraderie and contrast.

Ross is never at a loss for a way to get into the period flavor and wit, as well as the antiquated styles of presentations in the earliest numbers, avoiding the pompous circumstances of being too "above it all" and grand. Instead, there's a playful insouciance with the frothy/fun stuff and a true elegance and yearning in the more operetta-influenced or formal statements. And he's the kind of performer who can address a loved one as "dear" and not sound too fake or fawning. Things become generally accessible because he seems to have an ease and comfort level with the work and communicates a joy in knowing and sharing them. This applies to his singing and playing which crisply convey the moods and relish the rhymes and word choices (like "Kodachrome" rhyming with "home" in "When the Journey's Over" or the alliteration in "languid, loose and lazy" and decorative sprightly figures in "I'm So In Love"). Listen carefully and you'll note him having some fun with the attitude in the internal rhyme "Though love is dead, you might have said goodbye" which precedes the line which is the song's title, "Why Do You Pass Me By?" (set to a melody by Charles Trenet).

Based on a 2007 concert and produced by Steve Ross and Original Cast Records' Bruce Yeko, for whom digging up neglected numbers is a mission and joy, this CD sounds clear and clearly like a labor of love. With the old-timey flavor, spoken intros and guests, with just piano accompaniment, it feels like an evening of parlor entertainment. Edward Hibbert, a genuine Brit, only appears for one guest vocal, a solo on "We've Got the Country at the Corner of the Street" from 1949, from the score for an unproduced show called Hoi Polloi. It's its own little hoot, from the flip understatement about World War II which opens the piece, "Since the War mucked up our town a bit ...," through lines like "to see how green is our valley that once was just an alley."

The female vocalists, Jeanne Lehman and Lisa Riegel, are far more prominent—singing with Ross or alone on numerous tracks, and they duet with each other once ("When We Were Girls Together"), their trained voices bringing an appropriate formality that can make things sound dated rather timeless to more resistant ears. But there's no condescension or awkwardness; all just seem to dive into the needed flavor. There may be a wink, but it isn't blatant. Jeanne Lehman, veteran of Broadway and concerts, has a quite flexible and still sturdy soprano, with her range impressive. She's somewhat of a chameleon, as is the other soprano, Lisa Riegel, who carries off an art-song-like lyric in French ("Meme les Anges") and spunkier assignments.

Oh, sure, there are moments when some creakiness shows, and we're reminded of more artful or sharper turns of phrase in the Coward canon and characterizations—some more flowing melodic strains or more knowing depictions of similar subject matter. In his commentary, our happy host acknowledges that not everything here would be considered the cream of the Coward crop, but that second-tier Noël is still pretty good. And it's certainly worth hearing. Some are cut songs from scores or just odd long-lost items, including early numbers where the young Master-to-be did not write both music and lyrics. In one case, written for a show that died aborning, the composer was Jerome Kern ("Morganatic Love") and the key part of the melody line morphed into "Where's the Mate for Me?" when Show Boat sailed onto Broadway. Some of the numbers may take a few listening to fully embrace, but it's quite worth the time and effort to let these strangers get to feel like the old friends they might have been had they been dusted off decades earlier. Better late than never. Thank you, Mr. Ross and friends, so very much!

Noel Coward: Off the RecordMembers who attended the 2012 Coward Birthday celebrations in London, when we were gloriously entertained by Steve Ross and K. T. Sullivan, will remember receiving at that time a “teaser” of Steve’s upcoming CD issue of previously unrecorded Coward. The arrival of the real thing was highlighted by Ken Starrett in our last issue of Home Chat. While I’m quite sure that some members will already have rushed out and ordered themselves copies, this article amounts to a follow-up promotion, and comes with the strongest possible injunction to all members NOT TO MISS obtaining this very special CD, even if you have to bid over the odds on e-bay to get it. (Actually it is easily available through www.footlight.com or there is always Amazon.)

Even if the recordings and interpretations were of questionable quality, which they are not, this noble work of Steve’s should not be missed by NCS members simply because of what it does: with a couple of minor exceptions, each of the 21 tracks on this CD “resurrects” for our enjoyment numbers from the Coward catalogue spanning the years 1918-1963 which, for one reason or another, were either never published at the time, or which have never previously been recorded, or both. Not only this, but with Steve’s well-scripted spoken introduction tracks interspersing the musical items, this CD becomes a little cabaret show in itself, and a dip into musicological history that is genuinely informative and educational.

Steve and I go back quite a long way together in wishing that something like this CD might eventually be issued. After the completion of the original ‘Noël Coward Music Index’ I had lists of Coward songs in various “popularity categories” ranging from “standards” in the top category down to category F (almost unknown, only sporadic performances) and category G (completely unknown – no known live or broadcast performances had occurred); we have hoped for years that someone could be encouraged to issue a recording of the best of these category F & G items, possibly under the title ‘The Unknown Noël’. During all this time, Steve himself has used many of these items in his own shows and entertainments, so actually he’s already been responsible for revivifying many numbers previously in category F. In fact, what with his last ten or twelve years of Coward activity and now this icing-on-the-cake CD, Steve has brought things to the point where the usage information on the ‘Music Index’ is now woefully out-of-date. Mr Ross, I have a deal of revision work to do on the Index and it’s all your fault. (Actually, to be fair, it is also partly the fault of the Noël Coward Foundation who supported the production of the CD, and Bruce Yeko in New York for motivating and inspiring it.)

One must applaud the high quality of the voice recordings on this CD. Nothing ever sounds too loud or too forced, and the balance of the voices (quite a bit of Steve Ross himself, but also the voices of Jeanne Lehman, Lisa Riegel and Edward Hibbert) with Steve’s piano accompaniment is very good throughout, whether in big melodic duet waltz or wordy solo. (Steve has also been careful to provide neat, accurate accompaniments with no “loose notes”, which you rarely hear in his live performances.) One trifling dischord, however, is that the same cannot be said for the recording of the pianoforte, which comes across with a slightly metallic, thin, “jangly” quality in its middle and top range. I had thought at first that this was something which had been specifically engineered into the first track, ‘Baseball Rag’, where a slightly “honky-tonk” tone quality works very well with Steve’s rag-type accompaniment, but I was surprised to find it persisting through many of the subsequent tracks - although one does stop being bothered by it after a while.

Some of the most interesting items are also some of the earliest, including three from London Calling! (1923) alone. ‘Spanish Grandee’ and ‘When We Were Girls Together’ show two different sides of Coward’s early creative ability: the first is a quick-and-easy stylistic lampoon where Coward presses all the right melodic and rhythmic buttons (including a Habanera accompaniment), while the second is a jokey fast-waltz duet which is really not a million miles away from being a comedy point number in 6/8 time. Here are early and completely assured examples of two “types of music” which Coward continued turning out with greater and greater facility.

Another song of great interest from the early years is ‘Même Les Anges’, written to be heard and sung with the 1925 play Fallen Angels. It’s a perfect example of a romantic French chanson and indistinguishable from anything else in the genre. Try playing “guess the composer” with this one - Coward wouldn’t even be among your hundred first wrong guesses. However, the single most interesting thing about this song is that I’m convinced that its composition must have preceded even the writing of the play (which occurred during 1923) and thus provided the play’s title. Its opening lyrics are: “Même les anges succombent a l’amour” - ‘Even angels fall in love’. Personally I find it hard to believe that the play was first titled ‘Fallen Angels’ and that the song’s French lyrics were subsequently designed to tie in, punningly in translation, with this title.

It is very good finally to have a performance of the “original version” of ‘What’s to Become of the Children?’. Written for a fleeting revue titled Whitebirds in 1927, it is a good and strong enough number for considerable chunks of both its lyrics and its melody to have found new clothes and a greatly extended structure in the 1954 cabaret song we know and love as ‘What’s Going to Happen to the Tots?’ Whole phrases of this song, such as “Mother is injected with the most peculiar glands” were good enough to re-use in the later song. Reference to injecting glands also resurfaces in Private Lives (written 1929), and we hear Coward use the phrase ‘the stately homes of England’ some ten years before the famous song of that title was written.

In fact, the CD is fairly packed with examples of material which got re-used or recycled in some way. Coward’s 1941 tribute/dedication to his songwriter idol, Jerome Kern, ‘We Are Living in a Changing World’, is not only one of the best romantic things Coward ever wrote, and not only does Steve sing and deliver it beautifully, but we find that the song’s complete Verse section – here sandwiched between the song’s two Refrains – comes back a few years later as an introductory Verse section to ‘This Is a Changing World’ from Pacific 1860. (Coward nearly used it a third time in Sail Away in 1963, but that’s a different story.) Also here is the early-1940’s waltz refrain called ‘Heavenly Moment’, which with new lyrics became the refrain for ‘Light is the Heart’ in After The Ball’ in 1954 - what should have been the main romantic aria of the entire piece, but somewhat sabotaged in that aim by Mary Ellis not being able to sing it effectively. Here, Steve and Lisa Riegel extend a single set of refrain lyrics by repetitions with keychanges – and get a great deal more out of the very good melody than Mary Ellis ever did.

Edward Hibbert’s vocal contribution comes with the 1949 song ‘We’ve got the Country at the Corner of the Street’, which celebrates a post-war “new suburbia” culture, written for a draft show which eventually transmogrified into Ace of Clubs (1950). The piece is neatly enough done, both by Coward and by Hibbert, but for what is presumably intended to be a dense-lyric comedy number, neither is the song and its characters inherently interesting enough nor is it really funny enough to leave much impact … and one understands why some things were quietly consigned to the filing-cabinet.

Steve Ross is careful to bring us as up-to-date as possible with his selection of material for this CD, and I was tremendously pleased to find one of my own favourites from 1963, a number dropped from The Girl Who Came to Supper called ‘Just People’. This is a neat and lyrical little number sung by the teenaged King Nicholas of Carpathia, who has managed to escape the constraints and protocol of the Carpathian Legation in London for a “day on the town” with his new and very un-royal friends, Mary Morgan and Ada Cockle. Coward put practically not a foot wrong with any of the lyric-writing he did for The Girl Who Came to Supper, and this gentle little song, bemoaning the fact that ‘Royals’ are never able to lead a normal life, is as good an example of Coward the mature lyricist as any of the material which survived.

I was hovering in Norman Hackforth’s background when he was guiding the posthumous publication, in 1978, of Coward’s 1944 song ‘There Will Always Be’; and in fact Hackforth and I gave the very first live performance of the song that year at a ball in Canterbury. But although this song cannot be said to be either previously unpublished nor previously unrecorded (Barbara Lee got in there and recorded it in 1999), I couldn’t feel happier that Steve has included it as his closing number for the CD. Steve introduces the piece with Norman’s printed introduction to the song, telling the story of how it was “saved from oblivion”, but it’s also worth adding that this song is yet another instance of recycling - its opening six notes were subsequently re-formed as the melody-line for the great romantic aria ‘Go, I Beg You Go’ from After the Ball (1954). Steve gives a most effective rendition of this very special song about Coward’s own most profound beliefs, though I think he could afford to be even more expansive and take the song still slower than he does. (He is probably the only person in the world to know or care that he has actually used the wrong chord progression (definitely not Coward’s!) under the words “deep down inside me”. Sorry Steve, I guess I had to find something to carp about.)

Don’t anybody else dare to carp at anything on this CD – just go out and get as many copies as you can afford, and give them to all your friends as Christmas presents this year. You couldn’t do anything better to promote Coward than to promote the hearing of this CD.

Noel Coward: Off the RecordFinally, I will indulge myself by calling your attention to an album that is not jazz, but should appeal to those who love popular song. Sir Noël Coward was one of the few non-Americans who contributed many songs that fit easily beside the classic pop of the Great American Songbook. Like his American counterparts, he wrote much material that never bubbled up to the status of being considered standards, but such was his talent that even his more obscure material usually has those special qualities that catch your ears. Noël Coward Off the Record (Original Cast -1128) is a collection of rare Coward material that was originally gathered together by STEVE ROSS for a concert at Lincoln Center. He called upon three guests, Jeannie Lehman, Lisa Riegel and, for one number, Edward Hibbert, to share with him the pleasure of bringing into the spotlight 22 songs written by Coward, in all cases the lyrics, and for most the music also, that had gone unrecorded and pretty much forgotten. Even the lesser of these songs have that unique brilliance that Coward brought to his work. He was capable of wit, passion and insight, all strengths that are on display here. Who would have thought that Coward would write a lyric about baseball, but the earliest selection here is “Baseball Rag” for which he wrote the lyrics in the 1917-1918 period. Did you know that he once wrote lyrics to a composition by Jerome Kern? Well, he did, and it is called “Morganatic Love,” a truly curious piece. In 1940, he was even moved to put words to a tune by Charles Trenet, and the result is “Why Do You Pass Me By?” Ross provides commentary throughout that puts the songs into their historical and musical contexts. This is a delightful visit to parts of the Coward catalog that have remained sadly dormant for too long. Thanks to Steve Ross and his friends we can now discover their charm.

March 28, 2013

Cafe Sabarsky in the Neue Galerie

Thursday night, I felt lucky to be in the audience for Steve Ross’s iconoclastic I’m in Love with Vienna. Opening with “Wunderbar,” “What could possibly be more oom pah pah mit schlag?” Ross segues into a few bars of “San Francisco.” The first, written by America’s home grown Cole Porter and the second by immigrants Gus Kahn/Walter Jurman/Bronislau Kaper illustrate tonight’s theme, the crosscurrents of American and European musical talent in the late 19th century, from old world operettas to Hollywood and Broadway.

Leave it to the erudite Mr. Ross not only to focus on the intriguing subject, but to make of it something as exuberant and moving as it is illuminating. Though meticulously researched, the evening is without pedantry. While faithfully interpreted, it’s close to schmaltz-free. What others might present as camp is celebrated, not exaggerated. Which is not to say Ross’s polished wit is not present, but that his affection and respect for the material is pervasive.

We start with medleys from 1924’s The Student Prince whose rousing “Drinking Song” “was greeted quite warmly during prohibition,” and Music in the Air written by Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II. “Way before cornfields and clambakes, (reference to the musicals Oklahoma and Carousel) there were Mounties and mountebanks.” I was surprised to learn the second show debuted the feathery “I’ve Told Ev’ry Little Star” and “The Song is You,” tonight evoking shadows of chandelier crystals. Both were later pop hits.

The delightful, arpeggio-imbued “Papa’s New Cab” from A Waltz Was Born in Vienna ...where your words of love won’t embarrass/because the horse worked several years in Paris introduces German-American Frederick Lowe, roots first. “These weren’t written in 3⁄4 time, but I’ve a feeling I’m allowed...” Ross suggests, following with piano selections from Lowe’s iconic musical theater oeuvre. A 1,2,3/1,2,3/reverse rendition of “I Could’ve Danced All Night” (My Fair Lady) has transporting sweep; “If Ever I Would Leave You” (Camelot) seems suddenly to have been born this tempo. The artist’s deceptively simple treatment adds context and potency.

“Just a Gigolo,” adapted by Irving Caesar from the Austrian “Schöner Gigolo, armer Gigolo”, is exquisitely charred. Ross’ vocal timbre embodies melancholy flavored by resignation and self mockery. Just a gigolo-sigh-as life goes on without me-pause-without me, he sings with empathy. Instead of Mario Lanza’s over-the-top “Be My Love,” we’re treated to a version powerful for its understated intimacy. A tandem “September Song”/”Speak Low” riding piano cascades more textured than showy, fills pauses with as much feeling as any lyric.

There are music box waltzes conjuring mechanical figures on top- – the girl wearing circles of rouge, the boy in lederhosen- – and sumptuous waltzes with sybaritic flourishes which would be at home on the Ringstrasse. The tumultuous heft of “I’m in Love with Vienna” contrasts with “How Do You Say Auf-Wiedersehen” which, as offered, is wistfully populated by ghosts. Ross sits taller when reaching for a higher octave and occasionally closes his eyes. In English and German, he lives the songs.

“I Love Louisa” (Howard Dietz/Arthur Schwartz) first performed by Fred Astaire (born Fred Austerlitz) in The Bandwagon, is buoyant. Ross’ terrific “ach” and growl add just the right jaunty authenticity. (Yes, he can growl.) “That’s How I Love You” (Ogden Nash/Kurt Weill) takes it down just a notch while exemplifying Nash’s humor with such priceless lyrics as, as a dachshund abhors revolving doors/that’s how you are loved by me. The performer’s deadpan delivery radiates mischief.

A medley from The Merry Widow, which may reveal Lorenz Hart’s own personal angst, starts wretched with longing, moves on to a waltz in which, if danced, feet wouldn’t touch the floor, and finishes with despair. “We can’t leave you so sad,” says Ross mercifully returning for an encore with the prologue to – wait for it: “Pirate Jenny.” Instead of the throbbing lyrics to that song, however, he sings those of Oscar Hammerstein II’s “My Favorite Things.” Imagine barking: girls mit vite dresses... und zilver vite vinters to the rhythmically ominous melody of Kurt Weill! Needless to say, smiles bloomed.

Steve Ross continues to favor us with indelibly concocted shows of his own devising. His elegance, clarity, and intelligence are endangered qualities. With any luck, Mr. Ross will find further venues for this piece. If so, jump at the opportunity. It is not to be missed.

I didn’t dine at the venue this evening but highly recommend the café for lunch or dinner. It’s comfortable, atmospheric, and the Viennese cuisine is wunderbar.

March 28, 2013

Cafe Sabarsky in the Neue Galerie

The 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s were decades of cross-Atlantic currents in popular music, as a number of European songwriters emigrated to begin new creative lives in America and, at the same time, American songwriters borrowed styles from the Continent – or poked fun at them. It was this exchange and often collaboration of talents that was the basis of a delightful voyage in three-quarter time – I’m in Love with Vienna – created and performed by Steve Ross, and presented at the Neue Galerie’s Café Sabarsky.

To call Ross’s witty commentary informative as well is not to take away from his rich playing and vocalizing. Among European composers whose music became part of the American Songbook – and whose songs were among two dozen performed – were Leonello Cassucci (“Just a Gigolo,” with American lyrics by Irving Caesar), Paul Lincke (“Glow Worm,” with Johnny Mercer), Nicholas Brodsky (“Be My Love,” with Sammy Cahn), Franz Lehar (the operetta, The Merry Widow, with lyrics by Lorenz Hart), and Kurt Weill, who, emigrating to America, worked with such stellar lyricists as Maxwell Anderson (“September Song”), Ogden Nash (“Speak Low”), Ira Gershwin (“One Life to Live”) and Marc Blitzstein, one of several who translated Threepenny Opera into English. Still another import was Austria-born Frederick Loewe, composer of My Fair Lady, who, pre-Lerner, composed “A Waltz Was Born in Vienna.” Among the American-written, Viennese-style musical jokes were Dietz and Schwartz’s “I Love Louisa” and Cole Porter’s “Wunderbar.”

The show played only one night this season, to a full house at the Café. It surely deserves a wider audience.

February 11, 2013

Bruno Walter Auditorium

New York Public LIbrary for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center

On February 11 Steve Ross presented a program entitled Out Went the Song, On Went the Show at the Bruno Walter Auditorium. There were two parts to the program, a panel discussion in the afternoon and at 6 PM a performance of major theatre and cabaret performers performing the songs themselves.

Ross and Max St. James co-hosted the evening performance beginning with Ross singing possibly the most famous cut song, “From This Moment On,” which was dropped from Cole Porter’s Out of this World, put in the movie of Kiss Me Kate and became an instant standard. First up was LeRoy Reams who told a funny story about David Merrick coming on crutches to see him at Freddy’s and stopping and bending over and picking up a penny on the floor. Jerry Herman later told him that the original first act closing number was Horace’s “Penny in My Pocket” and Reims sang it superbly with full animation and show biz pizzazz. The third song was “Bronxville Darby and Joan” cut from Noel Coward’s Sail Away, an amusing duet Ross did with Jane Summerhays. The oldest known cut song, from 1903’s Babes in Toyland was “She Was A Country Girl” and it was sweetly sung by lyric soprano Korliss Uecker, soaring with operetta high notes!

Mary Foster Conklin, who is opening her Fran Landesman show in March at the Metropolitan Room, told the back story of The Nervous Set which opened in St. Louis at the legendary Crystal Palace and had the heroine sing “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most” before committing suicide. The song and suicide were not in the Broadway production. Conklin did the complete song, with all its verses, dramatically and purely, and the audience cheered at the end. The song was replaced by “Ballad of the Sad Young Men.”

Walter Willison told the story of the ballad he had in the second act of Richard Rodgers and Martin Charnin’s Two By Two which he only recently learned was cut because lead Danny Kaye didn’t want it in. Willison related that the lyrics of the song were special because they were a pantoum, which means that the first and second lines of the lyrics are repeated in reverse order at the end of the song. The song was a beautiful and brilliant “You Couldn’t Please Me More” and Willison, who hadn’t sang the song since 1970, did it with heart-breaking tenderness.

Brian Gari sang his own “Nothing’s Changin’ This Love” which was cut from Late Night Comic in Connecticut. Shana Farr did a shimmeringly beautiful “Where Do I Go From Here,” the ballad cut from Fiorello. Ross did a cute cut song from Goodtime Charley, “Tomorrow’s Good Old Days.”

Emily Loesser, whose mother is Jo Sullivan and father was Frank Loesser, lovingly sang “Dear Sweet Sewing Machine” cut from Fiddler on the Roof. Young Liam Forde sang “A Green and Private World” cut from Drat! The Cat! with lyrics by Ira (“Rosemary’s Baby“) Levin and the composer, Milton Schafer, was present and stood up to applause.

Joe Sirola sang a Walter Winchell inspired “Dot, Dot, Dot” which was Jack Cassidy’s number dictating a column to Linda Lavin in It’s A Bird, It’s A Plane, It’s Superman which was cut after the first performance in Philadelphia because the song, which everyone in the cast loved, got zero applause from the matinee ladies.

Frank Basile, with his supple bass baritone, sang “When My Back Is to the Wall” cut from Her First Roman by Irwin Drake who was applauded in the front row with his beautiful wife, Edith, who was celebrating her birthday.

Karen Oberlin sang “Wanting To Be Wanted,” which was removed just before the Broadway opening of The Most Happy Fella and replaced with “Somebody Somewhere” with a fragment as the intro to it. It’s a rare treasure and Oberlin gave off an aura of longing and hope in her beautiful rendition.

Ross was joined by Colleen McHugh to sing Cole Porter’s amusing “Let’s Misbehave” cut from 1927’s Paris. Ross then did two songs cut from The Happy Time, a beautiful ballad “If You Leave Me Now,” and the clever “Getting Younger Every Year“ which he did with Willison and Ted Bouton,

All the soloists returned for the finale, a repeat of “From This Moment On.” Fortunately, both the afternoon and evening performances were recorded for the Library archives.

In the weeks leading up to Christmas Steve Ross appeared at London’s latest Cabaret Venues the Crazy Coqs Cabaret, part of a lavish new complex which also includes Zedel Brasserie, Bar Americain and ZL Café in the basement of what was once the Regent Palace Hotel in Piccadilly Circus.

New Yorker Steve Ross has delighted his audiences in this neck of the woods before just on the other side of Eros’s fountain at the Jermyn Street Theatre and at the other end of Piccadilly at the late-lamented Pizza on the Park not to mention quite recently at the Pheasantry in Kings Road.

Always a night to remember this time Mr. Ross treated us to not one but two cabarets on consecutive weeks. The first was with the wonderful Ms. KT Sullivan. Together they sang just what you want to hear just before Christmas, a nice sprinkling of American Song Book classics from Hollywood musicals such as THEY ALL LAUGHED from the Astaire and Rogers picture Shall We Dance? (Ross is often compared to Astaire and whilst I have never seen him dance his easy going style and impeccable phrasing is certainly reminiscent of the great man), the Bob Hope classic THANKS FOR THE MEMORY from The Big Broadcast of 1938 by Robin and Rainger and I REMEMBER IT WELL from Lerner & Loewe’s musical Gigi and the Broadway Stage too like REMEMBER from Sondheim’s Follies and CLASS and ME AND MY BABY from Kander & Ebb’s Chicago. These was interspersed with some hilarious solos by Ms. Sullivan which included I’M A VAMP by Mischa Spoliansky, I NEVER DO ANYTHING TWICE by Sondheim, I WANNA BE BAD from Follow Through by DeSylva, Brown and Henderson and a wonderful “KATHEEN MEDLEY” ending the mystery of the “KT” moniker Ms. Sullivan has adopted.

Steve Ross too got his chance to do some solos which included FANETTE by Jacques Brel in English and the French theme continued with a marvelous display of pianistic dexterity in an EDITH PIAF Medley. Other solos included LOVE IN A NEW TEMPO from Take Five by Ronny Graham, I’VE BEEN MARRIED from My Man Godfrey by Alan Jay Lerner, music Gerard Kenny and ONE MORE WALK AROUND THE GARDEN from Carmelina by Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane.

A fabulous evening of fun was had by all at the capacity-filled wonderful new venue that can now be added to the growing list of London Cabaret venues.

A week later Steve Ross was back with another show entitled I Love Vienna where alongside some of the regular American Songbook stalwarts his repertoire extended to Operetta too which I sadly missed. There is no to this great man’s energy and enthusiasm.

On Saturday January 12 and Sunday January 13 internationally renowned Cabaret pianist/singer Steve Ross, who has been called the 'Crown Prince of Cabaret', brought one of his many evenings of song The Music of Fred Astaire called Puttin' On the Ritz to Vitello's Upstairs in Studio City. Ross began his career, some forty years ago, primarily as a pianist, at Ted Hook's Backstage in New York. With no singing experience, he thrust himself into the spotlight singing at the piano, developing his unmatched, uncanny style of song and repartee... and the rest is history.

As he devilishly teased us at the top "You're absolutely riddled with sophistication" he called his set in honor of Mr. Astaire the "all singing, all talking, non dancing" act. What a delicious sense of humor! "I learned to play at my mother's knees and other low joints." And... the delightful anecdotes about these legends could fill an encyclopedia. How many knew that Fred Astaire and his sister Adele were a kiddie team at a tender age on the Orpheum Circuit? Or that Astaire actually composed the tune "City of the Angels" with Tommy Wolf in honor of Hollywood? It's Ross' love of the lyrics of the songs and his ability to communicate that to us that make him even more extra special. His favorite song "Dancing in the Dark" by Dietz and Schwartz tells us we're "waltzing in the wonder of why we're here". We stop and really listen, and focus on the beauty of the lyrics... and that makes all the difference. Ross' lilting baritone and his divine artistry at the piano keys produce a 90-minute vocal montage of some 36 splendid tunes by Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, the Gershwins, Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer among others. Brian Cassier beautifully accompanied on double bass throughout. An entertainment and enrichment master class all rolled into one! I felt like I was back in a piano bar in NYC and could have stayed and sung along all night. Smooth, elegantly dressed - when was the last time you saw a cabaret singer wear a tux? - and yes, just plain sophisticated as hell, Steve Ross does live up to every accolade that has come his way.

Other highlights of the evening included: Cole Porter's delightful "Thank You So Much Mrs. Loughsborough-Goodby", Irving Berlin's carefree "Let Yourself Go" and the oh so romantic "Cheek to Cheek", Dorothy Fields' and Jerome Kern's dreamy "The Way You Look Tonight" created for Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Swing Time, Dietz' and Schwartz' lovely "I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan", Arlen and Mercer's unforgettable "My Shining Hour", as well as the ever popular "One More for the Road", and the incomparable pairing of "Steppin' Out with My Baby" with "Puttin' On the Ritz" both mesmerizing Berlin classics. Most of the tunes were presented in medleys by composers, such as a batch of Gershwin, then a potpourri of Berlin, etc all enriched with Ross' lovable patter. There was not a boring moment. How could there be with Ross' slick delivery, sense of fun and unpredictably quaint change in inflection or interpretation, which made it all quite exciting to take in like fine wine!

There are a great collection of CDs, allowing you to listen with pleasure to Steve Ross "Night and Day". He sings Porter, Alan Jay Lerner among many others.

Let me add that this is my very first Steve Ross experience, but certainly not my last. Ross has a terrific following. Among the packed house on Saturday the 12th were songstersNancy Dussault, Karen Morrow and Andrea Marcovicci, as well as directors Miriam Nelson and Bryan Rasmussen. Ross is revered in the field of music, much like Barbara Cook. Thanks to musicians like Cook and Ross, the beautiful music of Cole Porter, the Gershwins, and Irving Berlin lives on.

The Crazy Coqs, Brasserie Zédel, Piccadilly Circus, London

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

The successful first season of the new London cabaret room, The Crazy Coqs, has come to an end with the “king of cabaret”, Steve Ross who brought us a new programme dedicated to European composers, notably the Viennese who purveyed succulent waltzes and operetta fairytale plots. Many consider that the operetta style died with the advent of ragtime and the modern syncopations of composers like Jerome Kern (with his legendary Princes Theatre shows), Irving Berlin and George Gershwin, but it in fact continued to flourish. In 1925, the year of No, No Nanette, with its modern flappers and jazzy tunes, the most popular show on Broadway was the Ruritanian romance, The Student Prince, with melodies by Sigmund Romberg, which ran for two years.

Ross regards Romberg as one of the greatest of tunesmiths, and demonstrates this with a medley including ‘The drinking song’ (The Student Prince opened at the height of Prohibition!), ‘Deep in my heart, dear’, and ‘Serenade’ (lyrics by Dorothy Donnelly). And as late as 1938 (the year Ross was born), Kern was returning to his operetta roots when he collaborated with Oscar Hammerstein on Music in the Air, from which Ross performs the wistful hymn to contentment, ‘In Egern on the Tegern See’ plus two standards, ‘I’ve told ev’ry little star’ and ‘The song is you’.

More recherché is the work of Emmerich Kalman, to whom Ross pays tribute with a selection of numbers from Marinka (1945, words by George Marion Jr). Marinka has just been a title in reference books until I heard Ross’s delightful selection. The prolific Kalman is generally considered one of the two greatest operetta composers – the other was Franz Lehár, and Ross sings several numbers from his masterwork, The Merry Widow. The English lyrics he sings are, surprisingly, by Lorenz Hart, who wrote them when working for MGM in the mid-1930s. Nicholas Brodszky, who made a career in Hollywood, composed with Sammy Cahn the great hit for Mario Lanza, ‘Be my love’. A film Ross surprisingly omits is Spring Parade (1950), starring Deanna Durbin with melodies by the celebrated Robert Stolz (‘Waltzing in the clouds’ and ‘It’s foolish but it’s fun’ were two of them), but from the Stolz catalogue he gives us two fine songs, a spirited ‘Two hearts in three-quarter time’ and a passionate ‘Don’t ask me why’, the latter frequently included in Marlene Dietrich’s act.

Johann Strauss II is represented by ‘I‘m in love with Vienna‘, while more recent sounds are evoked in Paul Lincke’s ‘Glow worm’ (words by Johnny Mercer) and Robert Katscher’s ‘When day is done’. There are Frederick Loewe’s numbers with Alan Jay Lerner from My Fair Lady and Gigi, and Kurt Weill’s ‘September song’, ‘Speak low’; and ‘One life to live’ with words by Maxwell Anderson, Ogden Nash and Ira Gershwin respectively. Probably the least known composer featured by Ross is Leonello Cassuci, who wrote just one hit, ‘Schöner Gigolo’ which, with English lyrics by Irving Caesar, became the haunting lament, ‘Just a gigolo’, sung with superb resignation by Ross, who has also unearthed a little-known treasure in ‘How do you say auf wiedersehen?’ by Tony Scibetta and Johnny Mercer.

The waltzes of operetta, though often gorgeous, are associated in some quarters with schmaltz or corn, and Ross has fun with some of the numerous parodies that have been fashioned on the subject, such as Cole Porter’s ‘Wunderbar’, which though originally performed by Alfred Drake and Patricia Morison as an hilariously exaggerated duet Kiss Me Kate, ironically became popular. Ross also sings, tongue firmly in cheek, Ronny Graham’s ‘Waltzing in Venice’ (“If we should take one more step than we oughta / We could be doing the waltz under water”) and a number from Rick Besoyan’s Little Mary Sunshine, a whole show dedicated to spoofing the genre.

The difference between opera and operetta, states Ross, is that operas have unhappy endings and operettas have cheerful ones. A version of the Mayerling tragedy, for instance, ends with the lovers settling down in Connecticut to live happily ever after, and another little-known production was The Happy Niebelungen to complete an offbeat, beautifully researched and richly rewarding evening full of enthralling anecdotes and enchanting songs.

London, December, 2012

Need sanctuary from all of that tedious Spice Girls hoopla? Across the street from Viva Forever a little miracle is taking place in the Art Deco room that has quickly become part of London’s cabaret landscape. The singer KT Sullivan and the debonair pianist and vocalist Steve Ross are two American Anglophiles whose solo shows have long been highlights in the New York calendar. Working together they have created a deceptively casual performance that is small but perfectly formed.

By the end my head was spinning. Where did they find that rarity? What prompted them to dip into Gilbert and Sullivan’s Poor Wand’ring One or I Am a Vamp, a mischievous Weimar ditty that Ute Lempur made her own a while back? Has therever been a more world weary version of Class from that most cynical of Kander and Ebb shows, Chicago?

Irish ballads mingle with Jacques Brel’s Fanette and a Gershwin standard or two. It’s no insult to Sullivan and Ross to say that the show sometimes feels as if they are making it up as they go along. That is how beguiling and relaxed the very best cabaret can be. Sullivan gives us a squeaky Betty Boop impersonation on I Want To Be Bad, but for much of the evening she unfurls demure operetta-ish vocals that form a potent contrast to Ross’s much more conversational delivery. His instrumental medly of Piaf numbers is another of the evening’s many gems, with Milord, Hymne a l’Amour and La Vie En Rose among the themes woven into a stunning tapestry. On Takin’ a Bath in the Blues, his self-pity became infectiously funny.

“Do the Spice Girls sing the blues?” Sullivan asked the audience afterwards. You know the answer to that one.

London, December, 2012

KT Sullivan is a German vamp who wants to be bad and never does anything twice while Steve Ross enjoys wallowing in post romantic stress syndrome.

Two of the genre’s most renowned luminaries from across the pond join forces to take up a stint as part of the first season at the newly launched cabaret room in the basement of W1 Brasserie Zedel. A grand piano and performance space have been designated to the side of the bar as tables and chairs fill up the circular, softly lit setting.

This delightful duo effortlessly migrates between operetta, story-telling, nonchalant anecdotes and complex, yet easy-on-the-ear, his and hers medleys. Lamenting (Ira Gershwin style) that it’s a pity they had never met before, they bounce songs back and forth like balls in a top class tennis match.

Covering mostly standard material ranging from Who Cares to They All Laughed and a wonderfully poignant rendition of Chicago’s Class, they are equally at home entertaining solo. Ross is endearing as much as he is commanding, but most of all it is his superb piano playing and lyric positioning that stand out. His phrasing is reminiscent of Fred Astaire and the late Bobby Short.

Sullivan plays to her heritage with some 19th century authentic Irish material and wandr’es through cadenzas in Poor Wandr’ing One with gusto. She also salutes the great early 20th century cabaret singer Mabel Mercer.

Transcending gracefully into their final medley, their stylish in-between-songs repartee comes to the fore. An artform in itself, this comes as a refreshing contrast to the often slightly forced and rather rehearsed versions performed by many contemporary British cabaret artists. If you want to see how it’s truly done, this is your chance.

London, December, 2012

Having just finished a run at Crazy Coqs paying tribute to Mabel Mercer, arguably the original queen of cabaret, K.T. Sullivan is now joined by the man who has been dubbed “King of Cabaret”, Steve Ross, for an act best described by the title of one of the songs they perform, ‘Class’. That Kander & Ebb ditty (from Chicago) is given its full satirical value, the pair having as much fun as the audience. Later the operatically trained Sullivan is heard offstage warbling the coloratura scales that alert Ross to the entrance of Mabel in Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, and a playful rendition of ‘Poor wandering one’ follows.

The show is fun for all, if with occasional reflection on unrequited love, without which no cabaret performance would seem complete. Jerome Kern and Leo Robin’s ‘In love in vain’ is one of the definitive songs on the subject and Sullivan sings it beautifully. Another reflective ballad, and a highlight, is Ross’s achingly wistful ‘One more walk around the garden’ from Burton Lane and Alan Jay Lerner’s short-lived show Carmelina.The evening starts with a trio of songs by the Gershwins, ‘They all laughed’, ‘Who cares?’ (sung in counterpoint) and ‘Isn’t it a pity?’, followed by Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields’s ‘I can’t give you anything but love’, the lyrics of which were based by Fields on an overheard conversation. Sullivan then adopts a guttural accent for ‘I’m a vamp’, partly sung in German, in which she boasts of souvenirs that she has kept from her conquests including “Hitler’s first moustache”. Sullivan then becomes Betty Boop to sing DeSylva, Brown and Henderson’s ‘I wanna be bad’, before displaying her ability to belt, as she builds to the climax of Sondheim’s impudent ‘I never do anything twice’.

Sullivan’s light soprano also serves perfectly for a medley of songs featuring her first name, Kathleen, informing us that “Thomas Westendorf, the composer of ‘I’ll take you home again, Kathleen’, composed it for his wife, whose name was Jenny”. Ross sings a sprightly version of Ronny Graham’s little-known ‘Unrequited love march’, satirising macho self-pity, before pointing out that requited love can have its drawbacks, the cue for ‘I’ve been married’ from an unproduced stage version of My Man Godfrey by Gerard Kenny and Alan Jay Lerner, who wrote the flippant but bitter lyrics – Lerner was married eight times!

Ross, his singing so easy on the ear as he invests every lyric with meaning, is also an accomplished pianist and plays a medley of Edith Piaf hits. There is also a Sullivan-Ross medley of recollection, in which Sondheim’s ‘Remember’ segues into ‘I remember it well’, ‘When I grow too old to dream’ and the exquisite duet ‘Thanks for the memory’. It is a beautifully conceived selection. One of the final numbers that the pair perform do is a paean to the famed London street, ‘Piccadilly’, no doubt chosen because of the thoroughfare’s proximity to this beautiful Art Deco venue which, in Sullivan and Ross, has one of its strongest attractions.

London, December, 2012

It is not often you get to see a duet cabaret, so this is a good chance to do so. KT Sulllivan and Steve Ross, both regular visitors to London from New York, have worked together before at the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel, NYC and The Pheasantry here in London. Last night at the Crazy Coqs, they debuted their new show ‘Together With Music’.

Apart from the number of duets featured, this is a particularly unusual programme, taking in songs both sentimental and amusing from the 1920s, rather than jazz, and others giving the feeling of an old-fashioned movie e.g. ‘I’m a Vamp’, where I particularly liked the German lyrics by Robert Klein, and ‘I Wanna Be Bad’, originally introduced by Betty Boop, and leading up to Sondheim’s darkly comic ‘I Never Do Anything Twice’. KT also sang a medley centered around her real name Kathleen which included Claribel’s ‘Come Back to Erin’, Westendorf’s ‘I’ll Take You Home Again Kathleen’ and Crawford and Crouch’s ‘Kathleen Mavourneen’. These songs have a legato quality which particularly suit KT’s voice.

The real skill of the programming, however, was revealed in the second half when Steve Ross sang the surprising choice of Jacques Brell’s sad and wistful ‘Fanette’, providing complete contrast with what had gone before. He followed with the dry humour of ‘Love in a New Tempo’ from ‘Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1968’ and Alan Jay Lerner’s ‘I’ve Been Married’, both delivered with restrained understated aplomb.

Again unusually, Steve played a long instrumental section, this time of a medley of Edith Piaf combined with Tin Pan Alley ragtime numbers, which then, believe it or not, moved into KT performing Gilbert and Sullivan!

You would think that such unrelated styles, mood and feel would fail to hang together and yet it all connected seamlessly, finishing with a lovely collection of songs of remembrance and memory. A good demonstration of just what can be done in a cabaret format that other performing art forms don’t allow.

I was aware at certain moments that this was the premiere of a new show and it felt a little under rehearsed at times. Also, the work would benefit from more spontaneous banter between the 2 artists. However, these matters will no doubt be resolved as the show plays and is allowed to develop and grow.

The 2 vocal types, KT’s soprano and Steve’s husky tones, work well together despite the differences, and both bring an elegance and sophistication which unifies them. At various times the audience raised a cheer, were moved, or chuckled in amusement. Despite the heavy nostalgic feel, the sentiment did not become cloying, and the show taken as a whole served to illustrate just what a wide umbrella the term ‘cabaret’ covers – certainly not just American Songbook, great though that is.

It is always good to welcome Steve Ross back to London. His brand of sophisticated singing and playing of great songs is too rare a commodity. His current show, devoted entirely to the works of Irving Berlin (whose remarkable catalogue could fill a dozen evenings) is particularly appropriate, for the song which first brought Berlin fame and fortune, Alexander’s Ragtime Band, is celebrating its one-hundredth anniversary. Ross opens with it, interjecting some other ragtime music and strains of Swanee River into his piano arrangement, the perfect beginning for an evening which demonstrates the boundless variety of Berlin’s output. Although, as Ross points out, Alexander’s Ragtime Band is not in itself truly a ragtime melody – it’s so typical of Ross to lace his performance with succinct comments and information. How many of us know that How Deep is the Ocean? consists entirely of questions?

The songs themselves are mainly much loved perennials, such as Cheek to Cheek, Say It Isn’t So, and Blue Skies. Ross mentions Berlin’s canny use of ‘catalogue’ songs in film musicals such as Easter Parade, which brought new popularity to I Love a Piano, a perfect number for Ross, who certainly knows “a fine way to treat a Steinway”. His piano interludes, including a medley of such numbers as Remember, and Let’s Face the Music and Dance, are extremely beguiling. There is also a sprinkling of lesser-known material, such as the jaunty Ragtime Violin, a comedy number called Cohen Owes Me Ninety-Seven Dollars, and a touching ballad, I Can’t Remember, which Ross first heard from a vintage Gracie Fields recording!

Another song with a British connection is It’s a Lovely Day Tomorrow – a hit in the Broadway musical, Louisiana Purchase (1940), which had great success in the UK when it was recorded by Vera Lynn as a morale-boosting number during the early days of World War Two. The neglected Let’s Go Back to the Waltz, from Berlin’s last Broadway show, Mr President, introduces some of Berlin’s gorgeous waltzes. One of his greatest is Always, which prompts one of Ross’s amusing anecdotes – when Berlin played the song to George F. Kaufman, the noted writer and wit responded by pointing out that the word “always” implied a commitment that he found daunting. He suggested the lyrics instead state, “I’ll be loving you Thursday”.

Ross has great fun with the comedy number about a bashful lad with unsuspected romantic qualities, You’d Be Surprised, including a little-known second chorus (“I know he looks as slow as the Erie, but you don’t know the half of it, dearie”), and he brings effective passion and power to make a showstopper of Harlem On My Mind, Berlin’s speculative evocation of the homesickness that the ex-patriate toast of Paris, Josephine Baker, might be feeling. The exquisite Change Partners and Let Me Sing and I’m Happy are two gems that come near to the climax of the evening, which ends appropriately with White Christmas. The show is a sterling tribute to a master song-writer, and it would be hard to find a finer interpreter of Irving Berlin’s words and music than Steve Ross.

Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival

How do you explain hearing an evening of American and European cabaret music from the early to mid 20th century as one of the events of the 2011 Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival? It is quite simple: Yeheskall Beinisch, chairman of the JICMF, met Steve Ross at a party in the USA and spontaneously suggested he come to Jerusalem to give a performance at the JICMF, now celebrating its 14th year. On September 9th 2011, the Mary Nathaniel Golden Hall of Friendship of the Jerusalem International YMCA was packed to capacity with people for whom the music of Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Gershwin and Édith Piaf was familiar.

Steve Ross was born in New Rochelle, New York. As a child, he lay under the piano, enraptured at hearing his mother playing songs of Noel Coward, Cole Porter and Gershwin - “all those standards that were collapsing around me”. Ross studied the piano and, following studies at Georgetown University and a stint in the US army, relocated to New York City in the early 1970’s, where he worked as a “background piano player”. In NYC, Ross played in venues that required him to sing and so he began voice training studies. (Steve told me that voice-training for him is an ongoing focus and that today he still enjoys and benefits from working with top voice teachers.)

Ross’s work in the popular New York “Backstage” piano bar and restaurant attracted a steady clientele eager to hear his repertoire of American songs; it was there that artists such as Liza Minnelli and Ginger Rogers were known to have stood up spontaneously to sing with him. In New York Ross developed his reputation of communicating easily with audiences, entertaining them well, often plying them with the tongue-twister lyrics of Cole Porter songs. His career spiraled when he became the first cabaret performer of the Algonquin Hotel’s newly opened “Oak Room”. Instrumental in the cabaret revival of New York, Ross has spent many years taking his show further afield - to the London Ritz, to “Pizza in the Park” (London), to Australia, Brazil, to festivals in many countries, yet still performing the length and breadth of America, as well as On-and-Off Broadway. Ross’s performance at the 2011 Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival was his Israeli debut.

Seating himself at the piano, Ross begins by apologizing for the fact that he does not play Brahms or Schubert. He opens with Irving Berlin’s “Puttin’ on the Ritz”: 

‘Have you seen the well-to-do?

Up and down Park Avenue?

On that famous thoroughfare,

With their noses in the air?

High hats and arrowed collars,

Wide spats and fifteen dollars.

Spending every dime,

For a wonderful time.’

Taking the audience for a wistful, whimsical and, indeed, romantic stroll down the memory lane of the golden age of the sentimental music of the 1910’s, 1920’s and 1930’s, Ross first presents a selection of songs by Eddie Kantor, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter and Gershwin. The piano is Ross’s band, adding color, rhythm, tenderness, magic and virtuosic panache to the songs… as well as some amusing interludes: interrupting Irving Berlin’s decidedly erotic “I Love a Piano” (1915) the artist suddenly quotes the pompous opening of Grieg’s Piano Concerto and, later, the much-loved and naïve C major Mozart Piano Sonata you may have played many years ago as a young piano student.

Cole Porter is high up on Ross’s list of favorites; much of the evening’s program focused on Cole Porter songs, including a number of songs from “Anything Goes” (1934) - “I Get a Kick Out of You”, “You’d Be So Easy to Love”, “Anything Goes”, and more. We heard “I’ve Got You Under my Skin”, (1936) a hit that became a signature song for Frank Sinatra and “Just One of Those Things” written by Cole Porter in 1935 for the musical “Jubilee”. The audience was reminded of Fred Astaire’s unforgettable role in “Night and Day”, a performance ushering in a new era of filmed dance in the movie “The Gay Divorcee” (1934) and Astaire’s "tripping the light fantastic” with Ginger Rogers in “Swing Time” (1936). Ross claims that what Porter and he have in common is the fact that they both fell in love with Paris and in Paris. As a Valentine to Paris, Steve Ross conjured up the sparkle of “La Ville-Lumière” and its enticing setting for romance (not forgetting its disappointments) in the wonderful “I Love Paris in the Springtime” and “C’est magnifique” (It’s Magnificent) both from Can-Can (1953), with the audience now less guarded and gently humming along in these numbers.

Another association with Fred Astaire was George Gershwin’s downhearted “A Foggy Day (in London Town” (lyrics Ira Gershwin), introduced by Astaire in the 1937 film “A Damsel in Distress”. 

‘A foggy day in London town,

Had me low, had me down. 

I viewed the morning with such alarm,

British Museum had lost its charm.’

This was followed by “S’Wonderful”, also written by the Gershwin brothers, for the Broadway musical “Funny Face” (1927) and introduced by Allen Kearns and Adele Astaire (Fred Astaire’s older sister.) Both numbers took the listener back to the heyday of the big band, with its polished, velvety brass instrument playing.

One of the highlights of the evening was a piano medley of Édith Piaf songs, with Ross giving his all, creating a vibrant and moving canvas of the bittersweet songs of the 40’s and 50’s Piaf had sung in Paris nightclubs, for the German forces in occupied France and also in the USA, her songs fired with inspiration and energy but also tinged with the tragedy of her life.

Steve Ross has been performing for 50 years. His voice is as bright and pleasing as his personality. With few spoken words and many sounds, Ross places the music centre stage, using the rich palette of his art to invite his audience to reminisce, to smile, to shed a tear, to take the nostalgic journey back to the time when romance was in vogue, when show-biz people looked chic and when hits reached the status of greatness. Communicating and singing out to his audience, one might almost forget that Ross was also the superb, spontaneous pianist accompanying the program.

The evening was drawing to a close; Steve Ross signed out with two Irving Berlin songs. With the audience in the palm of his hand, there was now no need for Ross to invite the people gathered at the Jerusalem YMCA to join him in singing Irving Berlin’s “Cheek to Cheek”. How could one not resist indulging in just one more moment to savor this wonderful era of music?

French Lessons

The Triad, New York, NY

We all know singer-pianist Steve Ross, one of the world's foremost interpreters of good songs. French-Canadian singer-actor Jean Brassard is less familiar, at least on the New York cabaret scene. I first became aware of him a few years ago through his participation in the Kabarett Kollectif, and with his splendid tribute to Yves Montand, "The Kid from Paris," I became a fan. The two men have joined forces to present "French Lessons," a winning evening of songs either by French songwriters or about matters French; it made its New York bow at The Triad recently.

The two artists complement each other nicely. Though he can cut loose—witness his animated (and authoritative) performance of Cole Porter's "Can-Can" (in this show done as a duet with Brassard)—Ross tends to be more reserved and reflective, with a sly and dry wit. By contrast, Brassard is a showman, an entertainer, with Gallic charm and a somewhat broader approach to humor—though he's certainly capable of depth, as in his darkly dramatic performance of Chico Buarque and Claude Nougaro's brooding "Tu Verras." (I'm not sure exactly how Gallic charm differs from other varieties; I suspect the accent has a lot to do with it.) Much of their banter centers around Ross's alleged weakness with the French language and Brassard's attempt to correct this deficiency. Of course this is hokey—Ross handles French quite well—but it makes a more-than-serviceable hook to hang the show on, and it's the source of good-natured fun; what's more, it gives the men a chance to delight us with the breezy "The French Lesson" (Roger Edens, Comden & Green).

An homage to Josephine Baker has both men performing "J'ai Deux Amours" (Vincent Scotto, Georges Koger, Henri Varna), with Brassard dancing in a banana skirt and floral headdress and bra. One could object that the song's hauntingly wistful quality is not properly served by this burlesque; nonetheless this clowning is innocent, crowd-pleasing fun, à la Luther Billis. Ross follows with his wonderful, at times gutsy, rendition of "Harlem on [Her] Mind," written by Irving Berlin in reference to Baker.

Ross shines in a medley of "I Will Wait for You," "Watch What Happens" (both by Michel Legrand and Norman Gimbel) and "Windmills of Your Mind"/"Les Moulins de Mon Coeur" (Michel Legrand, Marilyn & Alan Bergman, Eddy Marnay). And I have never heard a more touching interpretation of "Fanette" (Jacques Brel, Mort Shuman, Eric Blau)—Ross makes palpable the pain and bittersweet joy that the song evokes.

With "Que Reste-t'il de Nos Amours" (music by Charles Trenet and Léo Chauliac), Brassard starts off in English, as "I Wish You Love" (lyric by Albert Beach). When he switches to Trenet's original French lyric, he opts not to do it sadly, but, instead, to focus on fond memories. Lovely choice. He does a magnificent job on "La Valse à Mille Temps" (music and French lyric by Jacques Brel), starting off in English (Arnie Johnston translation) then switching to French. In this instance I wish he'd sing the complete song in English, because Johnston's translation has so much more substance and depth than the merely showy version ("Carousel") we normally hear, and the unsung English lyrics complete the portrait that Johnston paints.

Brassard and Ross deliver many other strong performances of material by such writers as Georges Ulmer, Vernon Duke, E.Y. Harburg, and Gilbert Bécaud. The numbers switch effortlessly between the two languages and from one singer to the other. This is a new venture, and it's not quite in polished form—for example, the selections chosen for the closing medley of "Classic Serenades" need to be revisited. But easily 90% of it is a wrap.

French Lessons en Chansons

The Triad, New York, NY

What is it about the French? Is the haute couture? Or the romance of Paris? Does it sometimes seem like every other person is a Francophile? These would include Steve Ross and apparently most of the enthusiastic SRO audience that filled The Triad for one night only as New York’s “Crown Prince of Cabaret” and Quebec’s “Kid from Paris” paired up to polish Ross’s French skills with lessons en Chansons.

Actually, lessons in French did not play a significant part in this delightful show once they finished Betty Comden/Adolph Green/Roger Edens’s “The French Lesson” from the film Good News. The evening was basically about music itself, with pianist/singer Steve Ross and Jean Brassard, a graceful song-and-dance man in the charismatic Yves Montand tradition. Brassard added much of the patter leading into different song groupings about Paris, love, life and time. Life and time, in fact, formed a loose arc in the show, recognizing the preciousness of time with “Le Temps” (“There Is a Time”) by Charles Aznavour, Jeff Davis and Gene Lees. Brassard then nailed the theme with the theatrical “La Valse à mille temps” (Jacques Brel), beginning in a leisurely tempo, picking up increasing speed and rushing into a tongue-twisting finale. The conclusion about life, about love was, of course, “C’est si bon” (Henri Betti/Andre Hornez/Jerry Seelen).

Directed by David Krueger, the 90-minute show flowed smoothly, capturing moods of Charles Trenet, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Erik Satie, Jacques Brel, Vernon Duke. In Charles Trenet’s “I Wish You Love,” Ross sang the English lyric by Albert A. Beach while Brassard sang in French, “Que reste-t-il de nos ammours?” by Léo Chauliac. Ross tossed sly asides to Brassard’s humorous tale of a young man waiting for “Madeleine” (Jacques Brel) and, as a treat, he played one of his signature tunes, “Can-Can” by that other Francophile, Cole Porter, not slurring a syllable nor missing an innuendo. Though he sang some songs in French, Ross’s outstanding moment was his solo rendition of Brel’s “Fanette” in English (lyrics by Mort Shuman and Eric Blau), a touching invitation to share in the nuances of a poignant romance.

The outgoing Brassard demonstrated his music hall versatility with smooth hoofing, mime and broad physical comedy, including a comical send-up of Josephine Baker in her banana skirt, all delivered with a good-natured audience connection. Turning on a dime, however, he persuasively found the drama in “Tous les moulins de mon coeur” (“The Windmills of Your Mind,” by Michel Legrand, Eddy Marnay, Marilyn and Alan Bergman) and in the elegant “Classic Serenade” of French love songs.

Steve Ross’s urbane wit and sophisticated musicality and Jean Brassard’s cosmopolitan ease and classic Gallic charm —“C’est si bon.”