Our pick: Daryl Sherman swinging at the Gardenia 1
Though she writes original songs, few contemporary artists have scoured the hidden corners of the Great American Songbook like singer-pianist Daryl Sherman. She’s a regular at New York’s Algonquin Hotel who gracefully straddles jazz and cabaret singing, essaying songs from both renowned and neglected tunesmiths like Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hart, Walter Donaldson, Jimmy McHugh, ...
Miss Carmen regrets … 2
Aug
19
2017
“I am truly honored to receive the Kennedy Center Honors Award and look forward to attending the ceremony at the Kennedy Center. In light of the socially divisive and morally caustic narrative that our existing leadership is choosing to engage in, and in keeping with the principles that I and so many others have fought for, ...
‘Pop’ goes the American Songbook, in Pasadena, under Feinstein baton 1
The Pasadena Symphony and POPS organization practiced what the Chinese call “double happiness” this week, announcing, in one fell swoop, the re-upping of conductor Michael Feinstein’s contract with the POPS (where he started in 2013) and the roll-out of a rich summer menu of American Songbook concerts at their bandshell digs in the Los Angeles ...
Ann Miller, in KISS ME KATE 3-D, too darn hot! 1
It was awfully fun, during TCM Fest 2015, to run into Jon Olivan who heads up the TCM Classic Movie Fan Club in Los Angeles. We mixed and mingled in Club TCM, sipping (complementary) Humphrey Bogart gin surrounded by Mike Kaplan’s great dance-movie posters exhibited in that lounge. Olivan shared a special memory of “Kiss ...
Fred Astaire’s songs that dance 2
If all you know of Fred Astaire is his movie dancing, the new two-CD set “Fred Astaire: The Early Years at RKO” (Turner Classic Music/Sony Masterworks) will be a revelation. With the possible exception of Bing Crosby, Astaire introduced more good songs — first on the Broadway stage, then in his movie musicals — than ...
George Chakiris, Sally Forrest perform “Night and Day” in 1956
Nov
20
2013
At Saturday’s “An Evening with George Chakiris,” at UCLA Film & Television Archive, we enjoyed footage of a vintage live television broadcast, “CBS ‘Ford Star Jubilee: You’re the Top, A Salute to Cole Porter'” which aired on October 6, 1956. Among other great entertainers on the 90-minute live broadcast (Louis Armstrong, Dolores Grey, Shirley Jones, ...