Rosemary Loar presents a show that spotlights the genius ofsongwriting legends, Harold Arlen and Duke Ellington. FrankPonzio, critically acclaimed jazz pianist is her musical directorand master trumpeter Waldron Ricks adds to the smokey1930's jazz club atmosphere of the performance. An inventiveforce in the cabaret world for over 30 years, last year Rose-mary Loar was honored with the 2012 MAC Hanson Award forcontinuing excellence.

Born six years apart, both Arlen and Ellington were the sons ofmusicians and both began playing with a band while still onlyteenagers. These two men changed the course of Americanpopular music, with influence that reached into jazz, night-clubs, musical theatre and film, and are pivotal figures of TheAmerican Songbook. Coming from widely divergent back-grounds, each man composed with elegance and sophistica-tion, yet incorporated a visceral sense that has its roots inAmerica's blues tradition. Both men broke "the rules" of song-

writing, not afraid to write challenging, unconventional melodies and unusual song structures. Ms. Loar says, "I am drawnto their music because they not only wrote with a deep sense of soul, but they never wrote down to their listeners. Theywere not afraid to challenge the ear."

So, how did Hyman Arluck of Buffalo N.Y. and Edward Kennedy Ellington of Washington, D.C. meet? Throughout theirlong and varied careers, the paths of Arlen and Ellington crossed or nearly crossed numerous times; for example, HaroldArlen wrote music for the 1930's Cotton Club review, "Brown Sugar," a revue that Duke Ellington and his band performed.This is perhaps where they first met.

Rosemary Loar charms her audiences, equal parts singer, musician, and comedienne. "Harry Met The Duke" comes onthe heels of her extremely successful "Sting, Stang, Stung, Swinging the Music of Sting (and The Police)." Ms. Loar's ex-tensive musical theater credits include six Broadway shows and four national tours including a star turn as Grizabella inCats, a Phoebe Award for the role she created in the original musical, Fair and Tender Ladies, and a featured role in theDrama Desk nominated The Audience. Last Christmas she played Grandma Who in The Grinch Who Stole Christmas atMadison Square Garden. The Rosemary Loar of the theatrical stage loves stories, and she uses cabaret to take her listeners beyond the music to reveal the human stories that lie beneath.

Rosemary LoarWhen Harry Met The Duke...

The sweet, muted trumpet of Waldron Ricks wafts in like shadows of a film noir. Light comes up on RosemaryLoar poured into a slinky gown. Frank Ponzio’s dark, deft piano eases in. It’s “Stormy Weather” (Harold Arlen/TedKoehler) and Loar is feelin’ blue. “The year is 1933. Ethel Waters, who introduced this song at The Cotton Club,said Arlen was ‘the blackest white man’ she’d ever met.” At the same time, a widely traveled Duke Ellingtoncould arguably have been called the Ambassador for Jazz. Quiet chords bridge to a sinuous rendition of his“Caravan.”

When Harry Met the Duke suggests Harold Arlen and Duke Ellington were kindred spirits who often crossedcareer paths, but may never have met. The seamless musical fit makes one wonder why no performer hasthought of it before. Between songs, Loar sketches an entertaining history of parallels. Her voice is the kind ofwide-ranging, impressively-controlled instrument that can not only converse with a trumpet, note for quickening,octave-hopping note, but scats like nothing you’ve heard since the iconic ‘50s. (Really, she’s extraordinary.)

“George Gershwin said if he’d just written the bridge to this next song, he’d feel a success” introduces Ellington’s“Prelude to a Kiss.” “If you hear a song in blue/Like a flower crying for the dew” (visible intake of breath, elbowsbend, fisted hands are at her core) “That was my heart serenading you” (breath out) “My prelude to a kiss.”Loar can sail from bright to dusky in a blink, peel vibrato to lingering sssss, and detonate a lyric without over-selling. There’s a beautiful horn solo and piano music so tender hands seem barely to stroke the keys.

With eight Broadway shows between them, neither author had a hit. “I Never Has Seen Snow” (Harold Arlen/Truman Capote!) is from theHaiti-based House of Flowers. “Snow can’t be so beautiful as my love is” Loar sings with youthful infatuation and assurance. This is anactress. Each number is shared with her audience by a considered character. Every expression is lyrically grounded. The only time wesee obvious showbiz is an occasional end-of-song, one-hand-raised silhouette, which actually suits her. Much later, “A Sleepin’ Bee,” fromthe same musical, morphs in Loar’s hands, from merely mood, to a story. There are long-line notes and pauses where not anticipated. In-terpretation is paramount.

Moving back and forth between the two writers (and their collaborators), the vocalist offers both familiar and eclectic material. For a specialarrangement of Ellington’s 1931 “Rockin’ in Rhythm,” she requests audience help. As the Metropolitan Room is often filled with singers,this is less chancy than it sounds. “If you’re under forty, there are words you might not know,” Loar warns with a verbal wink. She explainsblaster (boom box) and the flat, round wax thing with grooves we played on turntables. It’s somehow not at all cloying. “Sista, brotha,gonna dance till you drop….”Enthusiasm is rampant. Everyone gets into the snappy rhythm and her sweeping, roller coaster riffs.

Two original numbers further freshen our highballs. The first, “Quando Swing,” couldn’t be more surprising. Its title refers to Puccini’s“Quando m’en vo” from the opera La Bohème. Both Ellington senior and likely Arlen’s father, a cantor, were appreciators of opera andclassical music. Beginning in full diva mode (did I mention range?!), Loar sways back and forth between Puccini and Ellington as if it werethe most natural thing in the world. There isn’t a hiccup. And it works! This is followed by “Between the A Train and the Rainbow” writtenby the performer in jazz/swing mode the celebrants would’ve applauded and as cool as its clever title.

Unlike many artists comfortable staying in chosen grooves, Loar is equally at home with ballads. A tandem “(In My) Solitude”(Ellington/Eddie DeLange and Irving Mills) and “Ill Wind” (Arlen/Koehler) eases from sensitive melancholy to raw torch. Anger rises out ofsorrow and retreats in fatalism. Knees bend, an open palm is extended. Accompaniment is wrung out of the piano. “Tell me where onesong begins and the other ends,” she challenges. Loar’s right, one would be hard pressed. “Out of This World” (Arlen/Johnny Mercer) isbreathy with astonishment, wariness, pleasure, and anticipation. Its final note disappears slowly, like smoke.

The show is well written, tightly paced, interesting, inquisitive, and enjoyable. Rosemary Loar is not only a formidable vocalist, but com-municates with her audience, showing an openness one rarely observes. Arrangements are top notch, musicianship skilled and symbiotic.It was unquestionably worth going out in the 95-degree heat.

Alix CohenCabaret ScenesJuly 18, 2013www.cabaretscenes.org

BWW Reviews: Rosemary Loar is'Out of This World' in Her

Arlen-Ellington Tribute Show at theMetropolitan Room

Cabaret Review by Stephen Hanks, January 25thWhen I heard that Rosemary Loar's new cabaret show was called When Harry Met The Duke, it immediately made me think about thefilm When Harry Met Sally, which then made me think about the famous scene in Katz's deli, which then made me ask myself the ques-tion, "Have reviewers ever faked it?" (because that's the way my warped and fevered mind works). No, not orgasms, silly. Have theyever faked positive reviews? As in giving a show or a performer a great review even when they really didn't care for either. Given whateveryone in the New York cabaret community seems to agree is the incestuous nature of the biz (such as it is), I'm sure it's happened. Ijust hope an orgasm was involved--at least for someone. While I'm probably as guilty as the next reviewer of occasionally going a bit too over the top for a good show or performance, I can hon-estly say I haven't "faked it" (at least not yet), and I don't have to start now when describing the opening night of Rosemary Loar's newshow, her third straight excellent effort over the past 18 months (she scored in July 2011 with Rosemary Returns to Her Roots, a col-lection of her own compositions, and last February with her Sting, Stang, Stung tribute to Sting). With her tribute show to the music ofHarold Arlen ("Somewhere Over the Rainbow," et al.) and Duke Ellington ("Take the A Train," et al.), When Harry Met The Duke isLoar's creative foray back into the caressing arms of the Great American Songbook (GAS). If you consider that the contemporarycabaret scene in New York is 30 years on (since the opening of Don't Tell Mama in 1982 and the start of the Manhattan Association ofCabarets and Clubs [MAC] in 1983), there have likely been thousands of cabaret shows with GAS themes and the interesting newideas may be down to a precious few. Loar, who has been performing cabaret shows during that same time frame, has managed tocome up with yet another variation, and her erudite and accessibly sophisticated new show featuring wonderful jazz, pop, and Broad-way songs from the 1930s-'50s goes down like a delicious vodka martini topped with a skewer of blue cheese-stuffed olives.With her able Musical Director and arranger Frank Ponzio at the keyboard and a bouquet of flowers on the piano lid, Loar's lean andlithe body looked lovely in a plum- colored, sleeveless, floor-length gown with a plunging neckline; the same dress that is so striking inher show promotions where she is pictured hovering over the New York City skyline as if she is the focus of an urbane version of theposter for the late '50s film, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman.One of New York cabaret's strongest jazz singers, the 2012 winner of the MAC Hanson Award for "Excel-lence in Cabaret" (photo right), opened with a jazzy medley of Ellington's (and Bob Russell's) "Do Noth-ing Till You Hear From Me" with Arlen's (andTed Koehler's) "Let's Fall in Love." She then went into asultry scat on The Duke's "Caravan" (lyrics by Irving Mills), and followed that with a deeply personal,emotional, and nostalgic rendition of Ellington and Mills' "Prelude to a Kiss." Throughout the show, Loar'spatter seemed charmingly stream of consciousness, but here she romantically reminisced about a longago walk in the park with her dance teacher Robert Atwood (photo next page), and about how the sparkswere flying before he finally decided to plant one on her. With Atwood (now her husband and creativecollaborator) in the audience, Loar fought against her voice cracking at the end of the lyric: "Oh, how mylove song gently cries/For the tenderness within your eyes/My love is a prelude that never dies/A preludeto a kiss."

Loar's show isn't the first time someone has connectedArlen to Ellington. In fact, in 1965, The Duke and his orches-tra played Arlen's "Between The Devil and the Deep BlueSea" in a 60th Birthday tribute to Arlen on the Bell Tele-phone Hour TV show hosted by Dinah Shore. In 1990, pi-anist Andre Previn (with guitarists Mundell Lowe and JoePass) produced an album merging Arlen and Ellington clas-sics. And one of the interesting subtexts of Loar's show--which she should flesh out a bit in future dates--once againexplores the strong affinity that assimilated Jewish popsongwriters had for the music of African-American jazz mu-sicians. This connection is often explored in popular culturein films like The Jolson Story, which depicts a young Al Jol-son becoming a "jazz singer" after experiencing the "new" music he discovers in the bowels

of New Orleans, and in The Glenn MillerStory, which shows young, white big band musicians like Miller and drummer Gene Krupa jam-ming with Louis Armstrong and other black jazz greats at Harlem's famous Cotton Club.In fact, as Loar points out during her show, the Cotton Club is where, between 1930-34, Arlen and one of his most frequent lyric collabo-rators Ted Koehler wrote songs for jazz band leaders like Ellington and Cab Calloway, creating enough material (like the classic"Stormy Weather") for two shows per year. Loar, who is a fine songwriter and introduces her own solid material in every show, used thisbit of musical history as the inspiration for composing a title song to tie together this immensely enjoyable set. In the jazzy story songabout Harry and The Duke trying to write a tune together that wouldn't quite work, Loar's clever lyrics included titles of famous Arlen andEllington songs and ended with "No one will ever know, why the music didn't flow/Between the A Train and the Rainbow." Rosie's take?"Yes, they're human."The music and Loar's vocals certainly flowed on the wild "Quando Swing," which has become one of her standards (it was featured onher 2008 CD of the the same name) and is a mashup of an Italian opera aria with Ellington's "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got ThatSwing)." From the Arlen songbook, Loar was poignantly vulnerable on "Ill Wind," sweetly seductive on "Out of This World," and subtlysoulful on two Arlen/Truman Capote ballads from the 1954 musical House of Flowers (and that became standards in the BarbraStreisand repertoire) "I Never Has Seen Snow," and her encore "Sleepin' Bee." After Rosemary delivers the last line, "When my onetrue love, I has found," she definitely isn't faking it when she then breathlessly tells her audience, "I have found my true love . . . and it'ssinging for you."I'll have what she's having.

Rosemary Loar “When Harry Met The Duke”JANUARY 28, 2013 BY: SANDI DURELL⁃

Mind you, Harold Arlen son of a cantor, andDuke Ellington son of a caterer at the WhiteHouse, never met. But what if they had? In Ms.Loarʼs creative mind these two masters ofmusic might have and, if so, they surely woundup in the same place - - the Great AmericanSongbook.

Loar is a jazz artist with a flair for dramatics thatput her in good stead with the youthful audience inattendance the night I was at the Metropolitan

Room in New York City. Some were students of her husband, ballet teacher Robert Atwood, whomshe studied with as a youngster and married. Ah, that kiss - - fodder for the expressive, sensually col-orful “Prelude to a Kiss” (Ellington-Mills). A mysterious “Caravan” (Ellington-Mills), replete with riffsand scat, highlighted, especially in the hands of Frank Ponzio, pianist/musical director.

With many years behind her in cabaret and on the Broadway stage, this jazz baby scats with the best ofthem and has a wide imagination. “Iʼm Beginning to See the Light/I Didnʼt Know About You” (Ellington-Hodges-Russell) offered a funky Don Rebic arrangement of riffs while “I Had Myself a True Love (Arlen-Mercer) wailed with passion. The arduous “Ill Wind” (Arlen-Koehler) pleaded in all its vulnerability.

Slim, trim and lovely in a plum slip dress, Loar is completely in charge of her wide vocally explosiverange as it swoops from high soprano to sensuous sultry lows. This couldnʼt be more evident than inthe cleverly paired “Quando Swing” – a compilation of Ellingtonʼs “It Donʼt Mean a Thing” and a soar-ing classical Quando Meʼn Vo. What would Puccini say? I like it!

Arlen and Ellington shared the same sensibilities – jazz and blues. Arlen wrote tunes for Dukeʼs bandat the Cotton Club. Thatʼs probably as close as they came to actually meeting, at least here on earth.But. . . maybe theyʼre swinging together in jazz heaven. Rosemary Loar is surely having a good timehaving brought the two greats together.

A Not-So-Strange Encounter: “When Harry Met the Duke”Written by Paulanne Simmons

Harold Arlen, the son of a cantor, and Duke Ellington, born Edward Kennedy Ellington, the son of abutler, came from different backgrounds and traveled in different social circles. Yet Rosemary Loar’sinspiration to bring their music together is fully justified in “When Harry Met the Duke,” her new showat the Metropolitan Room.

Loar, who has been a cabaret artist for over 30 years and last year was awarded MAC’s HansenAward, is clearly in command of her material. With her musical director, Frank Ponzio at the piano,she sings scat to Ellington and teases the audience with what it might sound like if she performedArlen’s most famous song, “Over the Rainbow.”

In one of her most imaginative numbers, “Quando Swing,” Loar pairs Ellington’s “It Don’t Mean aThing” with Puccini’s “La Boheme,” While Ellington’s “Prelude to a Kiss” and Arlen’s “I Had Myself aTrue Love,” allow her to show what she can do with a luscious love ballad. In her original composition,“When Harry Met the Duke,” Loar imagines what might have happened had the two actually per-formed together.

Loar’s voice easily slides from high to husky. Sheknows how to caress a ballad and belt the blues.Best of all is Loar’s personal appeal. She is viva-cious and funny, gamely teasing both her accompa-nist and her audience. Her anecdotes tell us a lotabout the kind of person she is and often reveal agreat deal about the subjects of her show.

“When Harry Met the Duke” discovers aspects ofthe two musical giants people might not always con-sider. Ellington toured widely. Arlen actually did writemusic for the Cotton Club, as well as two musicalswritten about and performed by African Americans,“House of Flowers” and “St. Louis Woman.” Loarsings “I Never Have Seen Snow” from the first and“I Had Myself a True Love” from the latter.

Duke Ellington and Harold Arlen may not have beenwell-acquainted in real life, but after Loar’s show,we sure wish they had been, and we’re certainlygrateful that she’s brought them together at last.