By Marilyn Lester***Hosted by Mabel Mercer Foundation Artistic Director KT Sullivan and entitled “The Future of Cabaret,” the second night of the annual Cabaret Convention proved its point in spades. Featuring ten young singers over 45 talent-packed minutes, each performance drove home the point that not only are the kids alright, but yes, indeed, the future of cabaret is in darned good hands.
It would be enough, perhaps, if the Mabel Mercer Foundation generally developed young talent. But more than that, the Foundation has a super-charged youth mission owing to the generosity and proactivity of board members Adela and Larry Elow, who created an Endowment Fund specifically to encourage teenagers to learn and perform The Great American Songbook (as composed between the years 1900-1970). The third annual competition took place earlier this year, with participants nominated from pupils who attend New York City public performing arts high schools. This edition of the Convention showcased the 2020 winners of the Elow Songbook Competition plus finalists from the first two competitions.
Videoed at The Iridium, those past two finalists are young women who’ve already begun to make a name for themselves professionally. Anais Reno, at 17 (and still in school), last year’s first place winner, has appeared at Birdland, among other venues. With Billy Stritch at the piano, Reno sang “Centerpiece,” a 1958 jazz standard written by Harry Edison and Jon Hendricks. Reno has a true feel for jazz, particularly favoring, and mastering, the Billy Strayhorn/Duke Ellington repertoire. She closed out the vocal segments of the show with a 1930 tune, “Body and Soul,” with music by Johnny Green and lyrics by Edward Heyman, Robert Sour and Frank Eyton. It’s an emotionally “heavy” song for one so young, so it will be a treat to see how Reno grows with that one over the years.
Hannah Jane (Peterson), the 2018 finalist, and also one embodied with jazz chops, with Jon Weber at the keys, offered two songs of a somewhat esoteric nature. (Side note: it was interesting and encouraging to hear many of the kids perform under-sung and perhaps even neglected material.) Hannah Jane’s first number was “Ten Pins in the Sky,” written in 1938 by Joseph McCarthy and Milton Ager. It was followed by Jule Styne, Adolph Green and Betty Comden’s “If You Hadn’t, But You Did.”
This year’s finalist of the Elow Songbook Competition, Savannah Lee Henry from The Professional Performing Arts School and is headed toward college at the prestigious Carnegie Mellon University. She reprised one of her winning tunes from the competition, “Secret Love” (Sammy Fain/Paul Francis Webster). The runner up, also from The Professional Performing Arts School, Leonay Shepherd, offered “Everybody’s Got A Home But Me”(Richard Rodgers/Oscar Hammerstein II). Also appearing, from the first competition in 2018, was finalist Christina Jimenez, beautifully maturing in her art, and presenting “I Have Dreamed” (Richard Rodgers/Oscar Hammerstein II). Also adding to the evening’s enjoyment and shining a large spotlight on the future of cabaret were:
• Kylie McNeill, The Professional Performing Arts School, “I Can Cook Too” (Leonard Bernstein/ Comden/Green)
• Jennifer Poroye, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, “Misty”(Erroll Garner/Johnny Burke)
• Thomas Hogan, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” (Cole Porter), with choreography.
• Julia Parasram, Frank Sinatra School Of The Arts High School, “Lullaby of Birdland” (George Shearing/B.Y. Forster), with scat.
Fittingly, it was the two steadfast bastions of America song, Adela and Larry Elow, who closed out this ever-so-important installment of the Cabaret Convention. Larry, a pianist (and more—with deep roots in the music business) played a few bars of “How About You?” (Burton Lane/Ralph Freed), but it was Adela who delivered a charming remembrance and spoke eloquently of the American Songbook, this country’s gift to the world. She ended with these (we hope prophetic) words: ” To our young professionals—learn the songs and then perform them all over the world.”
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