Mary Cleere Haran Celebrates the Genius of Johnny Mercer

Mary Cleere Haran
Feinstein’s at Loew’s Regency

Celebrating the centennial year of the genius lyrics of Johnny Mercer (he would be 100 on Nov. 18), the sophisticated cabaret star Mary Cleere Haran is serving up a banquet of musical delicacies at Feinstein’s at Loew’s Regency. For a hip New York component of everything cool, Read More

On a Cleere Day, You Can See Doris

MARY CLEERE HARAN
Feinstein’s at Loews Regency
540 Park Avenue at 61st Street
Tuesday, Oct. 23, to Saturday, Oct. 27
212-339-4095 for reservations

Before I get into the serious, depressing stuff, baby let me light your fire. At Feinstein’s at Loews Regency, one of my favorite singers, Mary Cleere Haran, Read More

Haran, Akers-Cabaret’s Best

On the music scene, Hoagy Carmichael is wrong: Spring will not be a little late this year. To quote Lorenz Hart, spring is here. The proof in the pudding is currently being served by two of the cabaret scene’s most cherished stars. Before they tear down the Bemelmans murals from the walls and move the Read More

New York Story, Via China

After Adrien Brody’s Oscar-night upset as Best Actor for The Pianist , the sky opened and the gods who oversee the universe (of showbiz, anyway) smiled down on him. Big things were expected of this dark horse, who looks like the least likely candidate for movie stardom since Jack Palance. They still are, because in Read More

Musical Cocktails Laced With Humor

It’s a relief to welcome the ladies back to the driver’s seat, no matter how slight or small the vehicle, and in the Apple this summer, there are enough of them in full racing gear to enter the Indianapolis 500.

They’re all celebrating the 100th birthday of Richard Rodgers. Bernadette Peters is in the Read More

Billy Bob’s Mom Has E.S.P. … Mary Cleere Haran at the Carlyle

Billy Bob’s Mom Has E.S.P.

The Gift , superbly directed by Sam Raimi, with a dark and brooding script by veteran screenwriters Tom Epperson and Billy Bob Thornton, is a chilling, suspenseful thriller with supernatural overtones that features a smashing performance by Cate Blanchett as a character with psychic powers, loosely based on Mr. Thornton’s Read More

In Hope Floats , Sandra Bullock Is Still the Girl Next Door

Prom Queen Slouches Home

“All Southerners go home sooner or later, even if in a box,” said Truman Capote. In Hope Floats , a tender film of warmth and insight directed by that fine actor Forest Whitaker and written with uncommon sensitivity by Steven Rogers, Sandra Bullock plays a former beauty queen from a Read More

And Now, a Few Words About Virtuosity …

The old-fashioned term “virtuoso,” which in the heyday of Vladimir Horowitz and Jascha Heifetz connoted the utmost in musical brilliance, has become something of a pejorative in classical music, suggesting a player who has a dazzling but mindless-or heartless-technique. And yet there remain those few musicians whose command of their instruments is not just physically Read More