A Cabaret Christmas
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Category: Music CD
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CD Details
Edition: Music CDCD Release Date: 1993-10-22
Music Label: Drg
Soundtracks:
- Winter Wonderland
- Christmas Love Song - Ann Hampton Callaway
- I'll Be Home for Christmas - Billy Stritch
- Merry Christmas to Me/Hard Candy Christmas
- Season's Greetings - Barbara Carroll
- Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!
- It Must Be Christmas - Andrea Marcovicci
- After the Holidays
- Silent Night
- I Don't Remember Christmas - Karen Akers
- Christmas Waltz - Margaret Whiting
- What Are You Doing New Year's Eve - Mary Cleere Haran
- Christmas in the City - Jay Leonhart
- Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - Dorothy Loudon
- White Christmas - Barbara Cook
Music reviews of A Cabaret Christmas
Music Review: Cabaret Christmas highlights many styles and varied talents.
Rating: 4 Stars
The fifteen songs on this CD, recorded in 1993 and re-released in 1999, show off the talents of a wide variety of singers, from the relative youngster, Mary Cleere Haran (then about 40), to the mature talents of Julie Wilson, Barbara Carroll, Margaret Whiting, Dorothy Loudon, and Barbara Cook. All are cabaret singers, accustomed to singing with minimal accompaniment in the intimate confines of clubs. Here they give Christmas songs an unusually intimate sound.
Of the several outstanding tracks, Ann Hampton Callaway and Billy Stritch are in peak form with "Winter Wonderland," a jazzy treatment filled with interesting harmonies, key changes, and variations, including scat, which they do in spectacular harmony. Callaway's range is enormous, and the arrangement by Stritch shows it off. Another duet, the surprising combination of smoky-voiced Karen Akers with the intense Andrea Marcovicci in "Silent Night," begins a capella, with fine harmonies, the two echoing each other in the lead-up to Mike Renzi's piano accompaniment. The strength of Akers and the intensity of Marcovicci make this one of the best songs on the CD.
In Karen Akers's own solo, "I Don't Remember Christmas," a dark, ironic, and fast-paced song, she comments on her ability to "forget" a lover, whose echoes are "gone without a trace," though she remembers the smallest moments throughout the year in which she has "forgotten" him. Akers's Piaf-like passion makes this another high point, though it is more about lost love than about Christmas. Mary Cleere Haran, in "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve," is in complete control, making easy key changes and giving new interpretations to the intimate lyrics.
Of the "mature" singers here, Julie Wilson (aged 69) sings "Season's Greetings" with dark irony and a whispery interpretation. Barbara Carroll (aged 68) still swings and plays a mean piano, Barbara Cook (aged 66) still has fantastic range, Margaret Whiting (aged 69) has almost the same great range, and Dorothy Loudon (age 60) still interprets with great passion. Their amazing professional skill (and longevity) more than compensates for any tremulo in their voices.
The out-of-the-ordinary selection of songs, the widely varied talents and obvious enthusiasm of the singers, and the outstanding arrangements, many of them by pianist Mike Renzi, make this a Christmas album which will delight lovers of cabaret music. n Mary Whipple
Description of A Cabaret Christmas
Attention all lovers of that rarified New York-lounge-scene singer known as the cabaret performer. This droll and sophisticated collection of Manhattan's finest features Karen Akers and Andrea Marcovicci on several tracks, as well as Ann Hampton Callaway, Barbara Cook, and Jay Leonhart, to name but a few on this engaging and at times jazzy, show-bizzy, and witty disc. The show stealer is easily Julie Wilson's "Season's Greetings." Wilson's greetings take you through every conceivable holiday of the year and then some--including Election Day ("don't forget to vote," she sings, sounding on every note unenthusiastic and overrun by all the good cheer, but wishing you well just the same). Wilson's mini-masterpiece of sarcasm, understatement, and cleverness ought to be on any collection that features "darker" Christmas fare. For this "Season's Greetings" alone, get a few copies for those friends who never seem to get in the merry mood. --Martin KellerCabaret CDs
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