Mary Cleere Haran
This is the fourth birthday celebration at the marvelous Feinsteins at the Regency.
The hotel, and particularly the room, are NYC to the bone.
Mary Cleere Haran has one of the most perfect voices in cabaret. Crystal clear with perfect diction, timing and pitch. The Harry Warren songbook was like a musical history class taught by the wisest and most beautiful teacher. It was a glorious, smoky, classy and magical performance. And so gracious after. A real lady. I look forward to seeing her back in circulation.
Mr. Broadway, Hal Prince, in the flesh. At my little birthday party. And Rex Reed, wishing me a happy one. Wow. 32 people, intimate and perfect.
Thank you baby, you did it again.
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6:38 AM
There were three Princes at feinstein's last night: Hal, his wife Judy, and you, My Prince. I love our NY nights, but every evening with you is wonderful. Happy Birthday!
6:38 AM
So that's who was sitting with the press kit near the Princes and Rex Reed:
NY Times - October 27, 2005
Cabaret Review | Mary Cleere Haran
Mining the Soul of the Scores Behind Movie-Musical Glitter
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
To listen to Mary Cleere Haran sing the songs and tell the story of Harry Warren, America's greatest unrecognized songwriter, is to experience a kind of Proustian reconnection with the best teacher you ever had. Maybe the subject was literature, maybe history, but whoever taught it deployed a combination of charm, enthusiasm and deep knowledge that opened up the world and made the past come alive.
"Lullaby of Broadway: The Harry Warren Songbook," which Ms. Haran is performing at Feinstein's at the Regency, is not the first time this singer with a voice like a cool, lotus-scented compress has paid tribute to Warren, but it is her most thorough exploration of his career. Warren (christened Salvatore Anthony Guaragna in 1893, he died in 1981) plied his songwriting trade predominantly in Hollywood instead of on Broadway. Because Hollywood has always treated musicians as hired hands rather than artistic prime movers, its songwriters have traditionally been given short shrift when it comes to respect, Oscars for best song notwithstanding.
But as Ms. Haran points out, the list of hits Warren wrote in collaboration with lyricists like Johnny Mercer, Leo Robin and, most prominently, Al Dubin was as formidable as anyone else's from the period. Some of the standards she has selected from a catalog it would take all night to exhaust include "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe," "Lullaby of Broadway," "Jeepers Creepers," "I Had the Craziest Dream" and "An Affair to Remember."
These are especially well suited to a singer who specializes in cutting through the la-di-da attitudes that performers often confuse with reverence as they embalm the very thing they are trying to revive. Like Warren and his collaborators, Ms. Haran has the gift of gab. She delivers songs in the unornamented, swing-inflected pop style associated with World War II. The mood she creates is the friendly, comfortably sexy, mildly zany, let's-pull-together spirit of an idealized small-town America. It may be optimistic, but it's far from naïve. And her pianist, Don Rebic (assisted by Sean Smith on bass), provides sparkling, good-humored accompaniments.
Her quiet, probing renditions of songs like "42nd Street" and "Lullaby of Broadway" peel away the crust of Busby Berkeley glitter to reveal these works as period urban tableaus, glamorous perhaps, but also seamy and permeated with sadness. There are moments of outright comedy, like the title song from the 1955 Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis movie "Artists and Models," in which she does both stars' voices, and other moments when she cuts to the bone. Pouring real bitterness and frustration into "Remember My Forgotten Man," she turns the finale of "Gold Diggers of 1933" into a blistering, unsentimental lament about the cost and futility of war and the broken promises faced by returning battlefield heroes in its aftermath.
Mary Cleere Haran performs through Nov. 5 at Feinstein's at the Regency, 540 Park Avenue, at 61st Street; (212) 339-4095. .
6:45 AM
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