Candice Lee is a singer of heartfelt, caring distinction. On stage, she is confident, energetic, and versatile, with a unique blend of musical influences and originality propelling her to become one of her generation’s most successful and iconic entertainers.
This deeply personal family story is an important, unique, and vital account of survival and hopes seen through the eyes of a child ably characterized by gifted actor and raconteur Ingrid Garner.
Seth Rudesky hosted an event at Café Carlyle that, in the annals of theater, shall remain a night of incredible music, cherished remembrances, personal anecdotes, and Broadway history told by the artists who live it. It was indeed a biographical sojourn of epic artistic proportions.
Tonight’s Broadway Valentine’s Day at 54 Below was an evening of love, song, romance, nostalgia, fine dining, unique beverages, and thematic desserts. The messages of love portrayed were universal, celebrating spiritual beings connected through energy, generosity, compassion, and harmony. As Shakespeare noted in Love’s Labour’s Lost, “When Love speaks, the voice of all the gods makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.”
I’ve often enjoyed Pershing Square Café’s wonderful breakfast specials and especially their legendary pancakes. After enjoying an early evening of swinging jazz across town at Birdland Jazz Club, I walked east from 8th Ave through Times Square on 42nd Street, past Bryant Park and Grand Central towards peaceful Tudor City. Nestled next to Grand Central where Park Avenue intersects 42nd Street is the Pershing Square Café. Tonight, it looked like the perfect quiet place for a post-jazz bite.
Swinging big band music was hot in Manhattan! From the moment the Tony Kadleck Big Band began their set at the Birdland Jazz Club, we tapped our toes and jumped to a tasteful, tight, polished sound, solid rhythm section, cats burnin’ solos, and sophisticated superb arrangements by trumpeter and band leader Kadleck.
Existentialism seemed to dominate undertones dealing with the passage of time, mechanically repeating the practices of our predecessors, and our insignificance in the vastness of the universe and history.
Samantha Pauly, who is best known from the Broadway hit SIX, brings her commanding voice to Chelsea Table + Stage and she is a crowd-pleaser.
A Tomato Can’t Grow in the Bronx is a heartfelt, sentimental look at old-world family dynamics that many of us saw evaporate after the shifts from cities to suburbs that accelerated in the late 60s.
If the 17-piece Kevin Blanq big band and Kathryn Farmer were not enough to get you in the mood for smooth swinging and dancing, the urbane, bespoke, and suave dancer extraordinaire Manuel Rojas appeared to deliver a dance lesson at 8:30 as a second band, Swing a Delic arrived on stage. With Rojas, it was time to revel in the legacies of Al Minns and Frankie Manning with Lindy Hop, swing outs, tuck-in-turn, jazz, tap, sugar foot walk, breakaway, and swing dance….dum-dee-dum, dum-dee-dum, dum-dee-dum, dum-dee-dum. Revelers thronged to the dance floor as the buoyant and joyous Rojas drew them in.
