Feinstein.

What are you doing New Year’s Eve? The cultured and the wise will be punishing the parquet at Feinstein’s at Loews Regency for the last time, saying goodbye forever to one of New York’s most venerable cabaret kingdoms. Yes, it’s one more nail in the coffin of the kind of sophisticated nightlife that used to be a staple of a musical stay-up-late crowd that now goes home to tweet and watch bad television. But Michael Feinstein, the swank supper club’s namesake, is not going down with ears plugged and eyes closed. While scouting locations for a newer, better venue that he’ll announce soon, he’s been filling Feinstein’s final days with an extraordinary lineup of superior talent—from the magnificent voice of Sue Raney to the tapping toes of Tommy Tune. Now the beat goes on through the month of December with the headliner’s annual holiday show, dedicated to keeping the spirit and sound of the Great American Songbook alive.

Michael calls this one “A Gershwin Holiday,” and he’s not kidding. It’s a holiday show in festive theory only—there isn’t one Christmas song in it—but Gershwin revelers will still find plenty of peace on earth and goodwill toward men. It opens with five tunes sung by Nick Ziobro, a lanky, clean-cut winner of the Michael Feinstein Great American Songbook Initiative’s 2012 High School Competition. Sixteen years old and crooning “Here’s That Rainy Day” in tune, with dreamy phrasing and perfect pitch? Don’t tell me the Great American Songbook is six feet under.

Then comes the indefatigable former saloon singer-turned-stand-up superstar himself. He loves the Gershwins and he’s been singing their praises for years. This is the first time I’ve known him to devote an entire show to their genius. Besides, he didn’t have to learn any new songs. He already knew them all. So we get a crowd-pleasing song cycle that runs the gamut of the Gershwin style, including swingers (“Strike Up the Band,” “Swanee”), familiar ballads (“Embraceable You,” “Isn’t it a Pity”), and even a surprise or two—Mr. Feinstein as Porgy, essaying “Bess, Oh Where’s My Bess?” is not something I was prepared for, but darned if he doesn’t do it justice, while demonstrating how much he’s expanded in range and vocal technique since he started singing for his supper in the old days of smoky piano bars on Hollywood Boulevard. From a raucous ragtime throwaway written when George Gershwin was 17 to a mellow “Who Cares?” there is something here to please everybody, marvelously served by a five-piece band conducted by ace arranger-pianist Alan Broadbent. Mr. Feinstein even finds the time and space to work in a medley of eight Fred Astaire songs expressly written for him and his sister Adele by his friends George and Ira in their halcyon days on Broadway. Except for the sad fact that the Gershwins, being nice Jewish boys, never wrote a single Christmas song in their lives (odd when you think about it, since almost every famous Christmas carol was written by Jews, including Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas”), I can think of no better way to toast the most popular holiday than a concert by the most important composer of American music of all time. It’s a great way to bid a fond adieu to an old cabaret institution and usher in a new Yuletide season.

Bring your own mistletoe.

rreed@observer.com

Rainey.

Despite the spate of inclement weather, New York lit up like a shooting star last week in the presence of Sue Raney’s luminous cabaret show at Feinstein’s at Loews Regency. A singing legend in the circles where serious jazz aficionados gather, her radiance, taste and incredible musical savvy have been missing from the New York scene for three decades. She more than made up for the absence with vocal artistry that can only be described as out of this world.

Pensive and informed by beauty, intelligence and charm, she is the whole package—brainy, talented and loaded with personality, the very image of class. A wish-list trio led by ace pianist Alan Broadbent, the dream accompanist of every aspiring singer, provided a hammock of chords for Ms. Raney to swing in on ballads and tunes hand-picked to dazzle. From Peggy Lee’s “I Love Being Here With You” to a cornucopia of selections featured in their recent CD A Tribute to Doris Day: Heart’s Desire, the Sue Raney-Alan Broadbent dream team covered familiar bases where groovy singers have gone before, but every arrangement sounded brand-new. I never thought I could bear to listen to “Que Sera Sera” again, but the poignant glimpse into the heart of a woman looking back on the days of her youth made this tired old Doris Day chestnut sound like I was experiencing it for the first time. Hoagy Carmichael’s “The Nearness of You” and Dave Frishberg’s winsome ballad “Listen Here” lulled her listeners into a state of bliss more calming than any Valium. On “Have I Stayed Too Long at the Fair,” a jazz classic from her first Capitol album with Nelson Riddle, recorded when she was 17, she was in better vocal control than ever, full of intense feelings that were never sabotaged by craft.

Though not a bombastic performer, Ms. Raney’s singing has a pulse and a rhythmic subtext that is thrilling. She feels it as she goes along, like a method actor. A romantic instead of an athlete, she still has the power to reach Eydie Gormé altitudes. Not a technical whiz like Mel Tormé or Ella Fitzgerald, she can still scat with the best, and the joy she exudes in a spotlight is contagious. I suffer through so much mediocrity in New York cabarets that a breath of oxygen as pure as Sue Raney is an indescribable reward that is inspiring. She’s in a class by herself. I hope she comes back to town soon—and often.

rreed@observer.com

McKay. (Mike Lawrie/Getty Images)

I probably haven’t seen the worst cabaret act of all time, but after Nellie McKay at Feinstein’s, I have certainly seen the dopiest. Part naive, lyric-driven song parade and part ecology lecture on the rape of the environment, this curiosity is called Silent Spring—It’s Not Nice to Fool Mother Nature and it features the cute, sincere and woefully misguided actress-singer in the role of late environmentalist author Rachel Carson, who devoted her career to saving the planet from arrogant self-destruction. Ms. McKay is a gentle activist who loves dogs and flowers and everything green, attaching a few songs about nature to a rambling discourse about the dangers of pesticides, insecticides and other acrimonious environmental assaults. (It’s not a show you want to see on Valentine’s Day.) The musical interludes do little to alleviate the academic tedium generated by the disorganized patter wedged between them. One or two critics I respect have high regard for this girl, but all I can see is a vast need for improvement. Her heart may be in the right place, but frankly, this corny little act, which she has constructed from crêpe paper and good intentions, is something of a mess.

The prize-winning books and essays by Carson, like Silent Spring and The Sea Around Us, are talismans to savor with results that resound today. (Among other accomplishments, the author was responsible for the government’s banning DDT from farm crops.) To her credit, Ms. McKay eschews preachiness for a more subtle, singable approach to life’s lessons. After an offstage chorus of “Every Little Movement Has a Meaning All Its Own,” she enters with her musicians, stomping among the tables to the tune of Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin’s “Make Way for Tomorrow” with teenage abandon, draped in graduation caps and gowns like alumni of Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge, replete with the idiocy of singer Ish Kabibble. The act eases its way down from there into a pool of ultimate silliness. Four tone-deaf musicians in straw hats shout comments like “Next stop  is Union Station!” while Ms. McKay dances with a biology lab microscope. Sometimes she answers the phone and in exasperation tries to deal with publishers, scientists and the annoying press longing for one of her pithy quotes. (“Hi, Rachel, this is William Shawn of the New Yorker calling!”) In keeping with the Carson conservationist theme, she gazes through a pair of oversize binoculars like Harold Lloyd. Then she pecks away on a portable typewriter while the audience waits for something to happen. A disastrous portion of her act is a pathetic, misguided attempt to milk sophomoric humor out of a literary phenomenon, with songs chosen to illustrate what the world has done to pollute the ozone. Well-intentioned and fearless, she’s a brave and bonnie little morsel attempting to inject something new and fresh into the calcified cabaret scene. Most of the time, her ideas backfire.

The full spectrum of Carson’s passion and its impact on future generations is merely a wedge issue used to string together a series of disconnected tunes. Some of them are wonderful. There’s a jazz instrumental by Charles Mingus, a touch of Irving Berlin’s “What’ll I Do” and a raspy socked-out bellow of Cole Porter’s “Let’s Do It.” How any of this enhances Carson’s work is anybody’s guess. Ms. McKay’s own compositions, like “Gonna Be a Bureaucrat,” are senseless curios with no defining musical characteristics. A horror called “Food” endlessly repeats the line “We’re gonna get some food in the house tonight—gonna get some food on the table!” while the four musicians feign falling asleep and snoring loudly. Something called “Old Love” plants lyrics in the air that fall with bewilderment on the baffled listeners: “I want an old love … don’t want a new love … a crimson and cold love … just like you!” Say what? “All this needs,” whispered a man at the next table, “is a banjo.” And then there they were—two of them, to be exact. Not to mention a dreaded ukulele, which should never be seen or heard this side of a Harvard-Princeton game. The show is called Silent Spring, so why doesn’t she sing the great Harold Arlen song of the same title, which says so much more about the darkness of the earth at noon than everything in this entire enterprise put together? The phone rings again. “Well,” she says in Carson’s voice, “I’ve been hearing a lot about these pesticides since the war!” You don’t know whether to laugh or wince. She often talks to people named Dorothy and Roger without identifying them. Were they people in Carson’s life? Does anybody care? A great portion of the time, she seems to be talking to herself, and when she gives an alarming report on the terminal lumps in her breast, it would be better if she didn’t talk at all. On the way out, an irate woman said, “You have to be on crystal meth to get through something this bad.”

Songs thrown together in a Cuisinart, splashing all over the stage, convey the beauty of natural wonder before it was abated by politicians, wrecking crews and petroleum tanks: “Early Autumn,” “Midnight Sun,” etc. They are wonderful selections, but her Little Lulu voice from the Stacey Kent-Maude Maggart School of Vocal Diminishment serves them badly. On Dave Frishberg’s soft anthem “Listen Here,” she sings the wrong notes. After “It’s So Peaceful in the Country,” I have finally heard Alec Wilder’s masterpiece performed like Spike Jones and the City Slickers. And what, I ask humbly, without rancor, is the meaning of an acceptance speech for the Albert Schweitzer Award for the Advancement of Animal Welfare, followed by “The Gentleman Is a Dope”? The whole thing is so confused you don’t know what’s going on half the time. Don’t even ask how “Ten Cents a Dance” fits in. She promises the audience to give out free condoms at the end of the show that are “tender” and “biodegradable.” I heard one shriek and a few gasps, but no laughs. Sophomoric patter only dilutes the impact of the points she aims to get across in the song lyrics. Faulty intonation, an errant sense of rhythm and occasionally singing out of tune don’t help. Everything seems to exist for the sake of a gimmick. It remains to be proved if she can anchor a quirky style to so much corn and make it work over a prolonged period of time.

As offbeat as she is, I can only wonder about the future of Nellie McKay. I think she will get better. She is smart. She is also sloppy and self-indulgent. The death of the Oak Room leaves the Café Carlyle and Feinstein’s at Loew’s Regency as the only two major hotel rooms in town. You now have to earn the right to play both. Ms. McKay isn’t there yet. The crowds punishing the parquet and the Parkay at prices equivalent to a Park Avenue mortgage payment demand more than just another precocious girl who stands center stage in a swanky club singing Hoagy Carmichael’s charming “Lazy Bones,” followed by a discussion of breast cancer. Some of the songs are first-rate, but she sings them all wrong.

rreed@observer.com

Son Bill with mother Sandy.

Two polar opposites whose only common ground is talent, astute musical perfectionism and the ability to send their listeners away happy, Sandy Stewart and Marilyn Maye are, ironically, appearing on separate cabaret stages this week. Talk about an abundance of riches.

At the Oak Room of the Algonquin, Ms. Stewart, a veteran of the Benny Goodman band and a regular on the old Perry Como television show, is sharing the bill with her son Bill Charlap, on the short list of the great jazz pianists of today. Performing exquisite standards and classic show tunes like tone poems, they stand out in a world of creepy cabaret cacophony like gentle harp strings in an island breeze. It is difficult to explain what they do. You just have to experience it, by listening carefully. What you feel and hear transforms their songs with thoughtful moment-to-moment observations about life and love and longevity. I don’t know what their family reunions are like, but this is mother-son respect and mutual admiration unlike anything I have known before. He pauses when she breathes, underscores her moods with the most subtle of thrills, and fills in passages between her phrases with chords sublime enough to make you swoon. I was enraptured. Unassuming and refreshingly without ego, she glides through the wistful melancholy of “I Don’t Stand a Ghost of a Chance With You” and Irving Berlin’s “Change Partners” without raising her voice above a whisper, while his cadenzas serve as love letters to her singing. Gently moving from word to word on “Where or When,” she keeps the crowd so hypnotized that a waiter’s fork against a porcelain bowl sounds like an atom bomb.

Subtle, introspective and understated are words most often used to describe Ms. Stewart, because without reaching for pyrotechnic effects, she holds her listeners enthralled in silence, transfixed by the spell she casts. Whether it’s the sadness of Duke Ellington’s “Solitude” or the gorgeous search for lasting talismans of the heart in the Dietz-Schwartz classic “Something to Remember You By,” each selection exudes a style and creates a mood. There’s always a section in each of her shows where she turns the stage over to her son. On this occasion, he treated Cole Porter’s “Easy to Love” as a jolly romp and “Cabin in the Sky” at a brisker tempo than usual, his fingers literally sliding over the keys like he was stroking a Persian cat. No big blast-off finale I call “going for the money,” but just “When You Wish Upon a Star,” with Sandy’s voice straight out of a dream and Bill’s piano accompaniment, so idyllic you want to move in a sleep in his chords. This kind of artistry doesn’t come around often, but when it does the effort to get there is worth it. Sandy Stewart and Bill Charlap are not out to prove anything. They’re just sharing. The nightly crowds at the Oak Room are the lucky recipients of all that bounty. Are we lucky, or what?

Bouncy, bubbly, buoyant Marilyn Maye uses different tactics in her no-fail strategy to land her fans squarely in her lap at Feinstein’s at Loew’s Regency, but they always work. Celebrating composer Jerry Herman’s 80th birthday year, she’s polished off many of the gems from Mame, Mack and Mabel and Hello, Dolly!, roasting even the most familiar chestnuts with her own inextinguishable flame. From the passion and power of “If He Walked Into My Life Today” from Mame, to the unrequited adoration for an imperfect lover in “He Won’t Send Roses” from Mack and Mabel, she picks songs that fit not only the moxie of Jerry Herman’s most popular heroines, Mame Dennis, Dolly Levi and Mabel Normand, but herself too. When she belts out “Before the Parade Passes By,” she’s really singing about Marilyn Maye. When asked about her career, Ginger Rogers was once quoted as saying, “The most important thing in anyone’s life is to be giving something—the quality I can give is fun, joy, and happiness.” Ms. Maye seems to subscribe to the same philosophy. One thing you can always count on is joy. In a big show of optimism, she calls this show “The Best of Times Is Now!” from the rousing, banner-raising march in La Cage aux Folles. I’ve got news. The best of times is most definitely not now. But her humor and positive energy and professional musical savvy is so infectious, she makes you believe it.

“Wow, oh, wow, fellas … Look at the old girl now fellas,” sings this knockout show business octogenarian, echoing Carol Channing, Barbra Streisand and Louis Armstrong. We’re looking. And we like what we see. Like Mame, she came, she saw, she conquered and absolutely nothing is the same.

rreed@observer.com

The forceful, ebullient song stylist is not only singing faster, she's singing better. All of those critically praised record albums and legendary appearances on the old Johnny Carson show that made her a household name have paid off. Time and the weather (not to mention several husbands and a few heated love affairs) may have filed an occasional rough edge on her voice, but she's forgotten nothing. The new show, called "Maye in May" (because it's spring and you gotta have a gimmick), goes soft on romance in songs aimed at youth ("Young at Heart," "You Make Me Feel So Young"), happiness ("That Face," "Your Smiling Face," "I Love to See You Smile") and optimism ("It Might as Well Be Spring"), with smiles as wide as buttercups. Her style is invigoratingly schematic, but--milking four syllables out of words with only two, or reaching for one high note in the middle of a five-bar chorus--it all sounds natural and straight from the heart. Her excellent trio (Tedd Firth on piano, with bassist Tom Hubbard and drummer Jim Eklof) provides both a cushion for her to lean on and a sense of humor (while she pauses on the word "China" in a Randy Newman song, Mr. Firth makes sampan sounds on the keyboard). It's an eclectic show, with something for everybody. A My Fair Lady medley unleashes the most swinging version of "On the Street Where You Live" I've ever heard, replete with a scat chorus Ella Fitzgerald would admire. "Butter Outta Cream," from the Marc Shaiman-Scott Wittman score of the excellent but underpraised show Catch Me If You Can, is cleverness renewed. Peter Allen's "Everything Old Is New Again" takes on new meaning. The lyrics "Don't throw your past away/You're gonna need it some rainy day" never seemed truer. From "Blues in the Night" and "Come Rain or Come Shine," with Mr. Firth swinging away in full chords, to a tender reading of "My Ideal," written for Margaret Whiting by her songwriting father, Richard, she really gives you all she's got. You get your money's worth.

Picking up some of the slack since the departure of Mabel Mercer and the beloved Sylvia Syms, cabaret royalty of yesteryear, Ms. Maye has also reached the age when so many lyrics sometimes lodge in her brain and she beckons for some prompting--from Mr. Firth, or even her fans. They know most of her songs by heart, and while making up for lost time, she seems anxious to sing them all. This is a good thing. She honors the core of every song, emphasizing fun. It rubs off. What comes through is a sunny desire to make everybody happy. She could write a book about how to work a room and play an audience like a deck of cards. Despite her new status as a cabaret queen, there's nothing regal or imperial about her, and despite occasional gymnastics (especially on the thrilling up-tempo Fats Waller material), she keeps things light, breezy and wrinkle-free. Even in the drama of Sondheim's survival anthem "I'm Still Here," she inserts her own brand of humor, singing "I've been through Barbra Streisand ... and I'm here." She can call her show "Maye in May" if she wants, but she's welcome any time of the year, with open arms.

rreed@observer.com