In the 2000’s, the San Francisco based Paula West was the most notable jazz singer to make her reputation (on the East Coast at least) at the Alonquin’s Oak Room – the now-legendary cabaret venue. Since the room, alas, closed in 2012, her appearances in New York haven’t been as regular as we would like them to be – which is why the promise of two nights in October and three in November is cause for celebration. Ms. West’s strengths are still the same, only stronger, not least of which is the ability to switch gears between such traditional jazz-and-cabaret fare as Rodgers and Hart (“Lover”) and more contemporary songsters, like John Lennon (“Gimme Some Truth”), while stopping at such iconclasts as Oscar Brown Jr. (“The Snake,” “Hum-Drum Blues”) along the way. A formidable swinger as well as a storyteller, she still delivers the most compelling interpretation of “Like a Rolling Stone” that I’ve ever heard, as well as of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “The Waters of March” – which, in her hands, is so soulful and powerful that it could be titled “The Ethel Waters of March.”
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Mezzrow
Dizzy’s
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