Maude Maggart has performed at the finest cabaret venues in New York -- from the fabled Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel to Feinstein's at the Regency.
March 10, 2007 (Press Release) --
She has been mentored by the likes of Andrea Marcovicci and Michael Feinstein (with whom she made her Carnegie Hall debut last April). And she just happens to be the older sister of Fiona Apple, the triple-platinum-selling singer-songwriter, as well as the daughter of professional actors and the granddaughter of a Broadway chorus girl who appeared in the George White Scandals of 1926 (and who now, at 96, favors a wardrobe of proper pastel suits and racy lingerie).
On top of all of this, Maggart, 32, is probably one of the youngest members of the Noel Coward Society. She has just released a new CD, "Maude Maggart Live," featuring songs by the likes of Jerome Kern, Hoagy Carmichael and Kurt Weill.
So it was surprising to see the rather thin (if appreciative) crowd that turned out for her Chicago debut Thursday night as part of Steppenwolf Theatre's Traffic Series.
History will not repeat itself. For Maggart, despite a few slightly tentative opening minutes in her "Good Girl/ Bad Girl" program," turned out to be a highly individualistic interpreter of dreams (and maladies) -- one with a unique approach to the American popular songbook.
Though less a galvanic vocalist than an actress who can craft a script from songs, she put a distinctive twist on everything she performed, carefully spinning her seductive web from material that was alternately sophisticated, playful, magically intimate and caught in that limbo-land of naughty-and-nice.
The theme around which Maggart built her set was the tension between girls who said "yes" and "no" (or "maybe") in the years before 1955. In counterpoint, she offered Joan Baez's erotically charged "Love Song to a Stranger," noting that the sexual revolution made for a whole new form of emotional expression. Bookending the concert were two songs about Little Red Riding Hood -- one from the 1920s and another from the inspired pen of Stephen Sondheim.
Along the way there also was Coward's poignant and poetic song of uncertainty, "This Changing World," which Maggart paired with that Kern-Hammerstein idyll of contentment, "The Folks Who Live on the Hill." There was the ache of regret tinged with a hint of masochism in Rodgers and Hart's "He Was Too Good to Me." And there was a gorgeous rendering of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "What's the Use of Wonderin'?" -- a beauty from "Carousel" performed in a conversational style that made it feel wholly new.
Throughout, Maggart had exquisite accompaniment from her musicians -- Lanny Myers (musical director-pianist) and Yair Evnine (guitar and cello). Surely by her next visit the word will be out.
Source: http://www.yahoo.com
POSTED BY HEDY WEISS Theater Critic
On top of all of this, Maggart, 32, is probably one of the youngest members of the Noel Coward Society. She has just released a new CD, "Maude Maggart Live," featuring songs by the likes of Jerome Kern, Hoagy Carmichael and Kurt Weill.
So it was surprising to see the rather thin (if appreciative) crowd that turned out for her Chicago debut Thursday night as part of Steppenwolf Theatre's Traffic Series.
History will not repeat itself. For Maggart, despite a few slightly tentative opening minutes in her "Good Girl/ Bad Girl" program," turned out to be a highly individualistic interpreter of dreams (and maladies) -- one with a unique approach to the American popular songbook.
Though less a galvanic vocalist than an actress who can craft a script from songs, she put a distinctive twist on everything she performed, carefully spinning her seductive web from material that was alternately sophisticated, playful, magically intimate and caught in that limbo-land of naughty-and-nice.
The theme around which Maggart built her set was the tension between girls who said "yes" and "no" (or "maybe") in the years before 1955. In counterpoint, she offered Joan Baez's erotically charged "Love Song to a Stranger," noting that the sexual revolution made for a whole new form of emotional expression. Bookending the concert were two songs about Little Red Riding Hood -- one from the 1920s and another from the inspired pen of Stephen Sondheim.
Along the way there also was Coward's poignant and poetic song of uncertainty, "This Changing World," which Maggart paired with that Kern-Hammerstein idyll of contentment, "The Folks Who Live on the Hill." There was the ache of regret tinged with a hint of masochism in Rodgers and Hart's "He Was Too Good to Me." And there was a gorgeous rendering of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "What's the Use of Wonderin'?" -- a beauty from "Carousel" performed in a conversational style that made it feel wholly new.
Throughout, Maggart had exquisite accompaniment from her musicians -- Lanny Myers (musical director-pianist) and Yair Evnine (guitar and cello). Surely by her next visit the word will be out.
Source: http://www.yahoo.com
POSTED BY HEDY WEISS Theater Critic
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