Last Monday night I went to see featuring Katherine McCann, Barbara Pappendorp, and Andrew Wassenich.
The 7- minutes was more a theatre piece than a cabaret, per se, but I know these lines get blurry. There were a lot of Russian inspired songs and readings of what I took as Russian poetry. There seemed to be a sort of plot with Andrew and Barbara as correspondents in love and Katherine as some sort of outside yearning soul.
It was really refreshing to hear a lot of material that one doesn’t generally get to hear in a cabaret theatrical setting. The muddiness of my comprehension of the evening above reflects the fact that the piece could probably have used a stronger outside eye to organize things for the audience. Barbara and Katherine both had strong moments in the piece (with Katherine even singing in what sounded like convincing Russian!). And James Fitzpatrick was his usual solid self on the keyboard.
Here’s the song line-up:
THOSE WERE THE DAYS, MY FRIEND — Music and lyrics by Gene Raskin, based on the Russian song Dorogoi dlinnoyu by Boris Fomin and poem by Konstantin Podravski
STROLLING HOME — Music by Viktor Zakharov, English lyrics by Jerry Silverman
WITHOUT LOVE (WHAT IS A WOMAN) — Music and lyrics by Cole Porter
MY HEART — Music by Isaak Dunayevsky, English lyrics by Jerry Silverman
DARK EYES — Music by Florian Hermann, Poem by Yevhen Hrebinka
IT WAS IN THE EARLY SPRING — Music by Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Poem by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy
SILENTLY –Music by Eduard Kolmanovsky, English lyrics by Jerry Silverman
MOSCOW NIGHTS — Music by Vasily Solovyov-Sedoy, English lyrics by Jerry Silverman
DOSVEDANYA, MIO BAMBINO — Music and lyrics by Pink Martini
FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE — Music and lyrics by Lionel Bart
Sounds like a dreamy, lovely evening!!!