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      With Venues Reopening Across New York, Life Is a Cabaret Once Again

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      “Thank you all for risking your lives by coming out tonight,” Joe Iconis quipped, welcoming a socially distanced crowd to the June reopening of the cabaret venue Feinstein’s/54 Below in Manhattan.Iconis, a composer, lyricist and performer beloved among young musical theater fans, was joking, but before diving into an alternately goofy and poignant set with the actor and singer George Salazar — a star of Iconis’s first Broadway production, “Be More Chill” — he added, earnestly, “It’s the most incredible thing to be able to do this show for real human beings, not computer screens.”Moist-eyed reunions between artists and fans have been taking place across the city as Covid-19 restrictions are gradually relaxing. “I hope you’re prepared for how emotional it will be when you’re onstage, because it will be emotional for us, supporting artists we love again,” a fan told the band Betty. In the intimate spaces that house these shows, interaction between artists and those who love them is integral to what the downtown fixture Sandra Bernhard called “the in-the-moment, visceral experience.”Storied establishments like the jazz clubs Birdland and Blue Note, newer spots such as the Green Room 42 and City Winery at Hudson River Park (which both reopened in April), along with the East Village alt-cabaret oases Pangea and Club Cumming are once again offering food, drink and in-the-flesh entertainment, as cabaret veterans — along with other jazz and pop acts, and drag performers — return to the work that is their bread and butter.Fans at Feinstein’s/54 Below snap a selfie before Joe Iconis and George Salazar took the stage.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesAn emotional Salazar onstage at Feinstein’s/54 Below.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesSalazar mingles with fans after the June show.Justin J Wee for The New York Times“To see people physiologically responding to music again — toes tapping, heads bopping — that’s almost better than applause,” said the pianist and singer Michael Garin, one of many who used social media to stay connected with fans during the pandemic, and among the first to resume performances for live audiences.But, Garin noted, “It’s not like we’re flipping a switch and bringing everything back to normal.” Particularly in the spring, not everyone was ready to pick up where they left off. “There were some musicians who were ready to book as soon as possible, and others who said, ‘Let me see — I don’t know if I want to be in an indoor space right now,’” said Steven Bensusan, the president of Blue Note Entertainment Group.The producer and host Scott Siegel, creator of the virtual “Scott Siegel’s Nightclub New York,” said that trepidation is still shared by some patrons: “Everybody’s hopeful, but I hear people say they’re nervous. There are also many who come in from outside the tristate area, and it’s more of an effort to get in.”Iconis rehearsing for his return to the live stage.Justin J Wee for The New York Times“It’s the most incredible thing to be able to do this show for real human beings, not computer screens,” Iconis said.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesWith regulations still in flux, both vigilance and adaptability are key. Before Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s mid-June announcement that the state could almost fully reopen, Birdland had planned to return at just 50 percent capacity on July 1. Instead, all 150 of its seats have been accessible from the start, with returning variety-show hosts Jim Caruso and Susie Mosher featuring theater and cabaret luminaries such as Chita Rivera and Natalie Douglas in the first week back. (The club’s downstairs space, Birdland Theater, will remain closed until September.) The Blue Note, which reopened in mid-June at roughly two-thirds capacity, has since made all of its 250 seats available. Proof of vaccination against the coronavirus is not required at either club, though masks are recommended for the unvaccinated at Birdland.By contrast, at 54 Below, where the plan is to build gradually back to a full crowd of about 150, proof of vaccination is necessary, as it is in the 60-seat cabaret room at Pangea, still limited to 80 percent capacity. Both venues were among those that developed streaming series while shuttered. “We originally got into it to remain active, but it became a way to pay staff, and expand the audience,” said Richard Frankel, one of the owners of 54 Below, which will kick off the new series “Live From Feinstein’s/54 Below,” offering live streams direct from the venue, on July 11. “Right now we’re focused on reopening live, but it’s definitely something to continue exploring after the dust settles.”Streaming a performance “broadens the spectrum of who’s able to see things, and that’s so important,” said the singer and actress Lilli Cooper.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesRyan Paternite, director of programming at Birdland, has been similarly encouraged by the response to “Radio Free Birdland,” though he added, “My feeling is that people are pretty burned out on watching shows on their computer or phone — especially if they have to pay for tickets.”Artists generally remain bullish on the opportunities posed by technology. “I’m very pro-streaming,” said the Tony Award-nominated singer and actress Lilli Cooper, who is set to appear at 54 Below on July 28 and August 15. “It broadens the spectrum of who’s able to see things, and that’s so important.” Caruso plans to continue streaming his “Pajama Cast Party” weekly; he noted that the virtual program has allowed him to diversify both his audience (“It has become more colorful, literally and figuratively”) and his talent pool (“I’ve delved into TikTok and Instagram and discovered some thrilling new artists”).Many are hopeful that diversity and inclusivity will be further emphasized in an art form that counts artists of color like Mabel Mercer and Bobby Short as historical icons. “My art is often based on what I’ve gone through, and being a Black man is part of that,” said the Broadway veteran Derrick Baskin, who packed R&B classics into his set list for recent dates at 54 Below.Garin, seen from above performing at the piano at the Roxy Hotel.Justin J Wee for The New York Times“It’s not like we’re flipping a switch and bringing everything back to normal,” Garin added.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesJustin Vivian Bond, scheduled to reopen Joe’s Pub in October, said, “The brilliant thing about cabaret is that you can react, if you’re capable, to what’s going on in the world.” For Bond, the pandemic posed challenges as sobering, albeit in a different way, as those faced by the L.G.B.T.Q. community during another plague: “When AIDS was happening, even when people were dying, you could be with them. What we’ve just been through was a very isolating trauma. I don’t know if I’ll have any brilliant insights about it, but hopefully what I’ll say will resonate with the audience.”Bernhard, who will return to Joe’s Pub in December for the annual holiday engagement she had to skip in 2020, still isn’t sure what insights she’ll be offering. “The head space that I’m in, I don’t even know what the next two months are going to bring,” she said. “I just want to perform, like everybody else does right now.”“My art is often based on what I’ve gone through, and being a Black man is part of that,” Derrick Baskin said.Justin J Wee for The New York Times“I cannot imagine any artist now taking any moment of what we do for granted,” Michael Feinstein said.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesPerformers and fans will be greeted with renovations at certain venues, and other enticements. Birdland has reduced its ticket price to 99 cents in July, the fee when the club originally opened in 1949. 54 Below is offering a new menu, created by the “Top Chef” winner Harold Dieterle. The West Bank Café’s Laurie Beechman Theater is getting a “face lift,” said its owner, Steve Olsen — fresh paint, new carpet and bar equipment, upgraded sound and lighting — in preparation for a reopening after Labor Day. The Triad Theater also used its forced downtime to “improve the furnishings, repaint and get new equipment,” said the booking director Bernie Furshpan.But it is the love of performing itself, and the perspective gained after a year of lost shows, that is driving many artists’ emotional responses to returning to the stage. Michael Feinstein, the multitasking American songbook champion and namesake for clubs in San Francisco and Los Angeles as well as New York, believes “that anyone who is a performer is coming out of this in a very different place, with a deeper sense of connection and joy and gratitude.”“I cannot imagine any artist now taking any moment of what we do for granted,” he added. More

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      England’s delayed reopening is a blow to culture and nightlife.

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      LONDON — Andrew Lloyd Webber last week promised to open his musical “Cinderella” in London’s West End on June 25 — even if it were illegal to do so.“We are going to open come hell or high water,” he told The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper. If Britain’s government tried to stop him because of rising coronavirus cases, he had one response, he added: “We will say: Come to the theater and arrest us.”Now, Mr. Lloyd Webber, 73, has his chance to go to prison — although he doesn’t appear to want to take it.On Monday evening, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain said that social distancing would continue in England until July 19, at least — almost a month later than originally planned.The decision, announced at a televised news conference, was made because of a rise in coronavirus cases linked to the Delta variant. An average of 7,278 cases per day were reported in United Kingdom in the last week, an increase of 127 percent from the average two weeks ago. Deaths are rising but still very low, with an average of nine a day over two weeks.Scientists remain at odds over exactly how serious a threat it poses in Britain, however, with some arguing that the most dire predictions about rising hospitalizations underestimate the effect even the current level of vaccinations have on breaking the link between the number of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths.United Kingdom Coronavirus Map and Case CountSee the latest charts and maps of coronavirus cases, deaths, hospitalizations and vaccinations in United Kingdom.“I think it’s sensible to wait just a little bit longer,” Mr. Johnson said, adding that the delay would allow more people to be fully vaccinated.The delay was a gut punch to the British cultural world, which has been desperately seeking an end to social distancing.The delay leaves “thousands of jobs hanging in the balance,” Julian Bird, chief executive of UK Theater, a trade body, said in a statement. A quarter of nighttime businesses cannot survive longer than a month without new government support, the Night Times Industries Association, which represents clubs and pubs, said in a news release.The biggest blow may be to England’s nightclubs, which were told for the fourth time that they could not reopen at all, even with distancing. Nightclubs in Britain have been closed since March 2020, and over 150 events were planned in London alone for the weekend of June 25, including a sold-out 42-hour-long party at Fabric, a famed club that can hold 1,500 people.Those were all immediately canceled.“It’s really, really frustrating,” Cameron Leslie, one of Fabric’s founders, said in a telephone interview. He had hired over 100 staff over the past month, expecting to reopen, and now was not able to furlough them. “You can only be pushed and tested so far before our entire sector can’t respond anymore,” Leslie added.Stuart Glen, the founder of The Cause, another London club, said in a telephone interview that the delay would cost him “hundred of thousands” of pounds and force him to rearrange 40 events. He’d had enough, he said. “I think everyone should riot if July doesn’t happen,” he said. “They can’t control people like this,” he added.“It’s so devastating for so many people,” said Yousef Zahar, a D.J. and co-owner of Circus, a nightclub based in Liverpool, that in May held two pilot events featuring 6,000 maskless dancers.Theaters, museums and music venues were allowed to reopen with distancing last month, but larger venues and all nightclubs have remained firmly shut. Mr. Lloyd Webber has repeatedly said that glitzy productions like “Cinderella” — which has a 34-strong cast and is already weeks into rehearsals — are financially unviable in half-full theaters.For those hoping to attend the opening of“Cinderella,” it was still unclear if the show would go on.“We’re working hard behind the scenes to make sure everyone gets to the ball,” the show’s producers said in a statement posted on Twitter. More

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      Some Venue Owners Get a Federal Lifeline. Others Are Told They’re Dead.

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      The first applications for the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program, offering $16 billion in federal aid, were approved.As the emails finally started arriving late last week, some business owners got the good news they had been long awaiting: They would be awarded a piece of a $16 billion federal grant fund intended to preserve music clubs, theaters and other live-event businesses devastated by the pandemic.But other applicants ran into fresh obstacles — including the discovery that the government thinks they’re dead. It was the latest bureaucratic mishap for the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant initiative, an aid program created by Congress late last year that has struggled at nearly every turn to disburse badly needed relief funds.Derek Sitter, the owner of the Volcanic Theater Pub, a 250-capacity music and performance venue in Bend, Ore., was at home on Saturday watching a British soccer game when an alert popped up on his phone: “Congratulations,” ran the subject line of an email from the Small Business Administration, which manages the grant program.Mr. Sitter ran outside to tell his wife and daughter the news, with tears swelling in his eyes. “My heart rate increased,” he recalled in an interview. “But it was a good increase.”The Volcanic was awarded about $140,000, Mr. Sitter said, though the funds have not yet arrived. (The size of the grant is pegged at 45 percent of a venue’s gross revenue from 2019.) Just how many venues have learned that their applications have been approved is unclear, but members of the network of small venues — which became a tightly connected hive during the pandemic — say they have heard of only a few so far. The Small Business Administration has not released details on how many claims it has approved.Bobby McKey’s, a piano bar near Washington, is stuck in bureaucratic limbo. Bob Hansan, the venue’s managing partner, said that his application was stalled because the government thinks he is dead. Charles King/C King MediaOther applicants got grimmer news. Bob Hansan, the managing partner of Bobby McKey’s, a piano bar near Washington, received a cryptic email Tuesday afternoon that began: “Your name appears on the Do Not Pay list with the Match Source DMF.”A few minutes of frantic Googling revealed that was a reference to the government’s Death Master File, a record of more than 83 million people whose deaths have been reported to the Social Security Administration.Mr. Hansan immediately called Social Security’s headquarters, which referred him to his local office, which told Mr. Hansan that they could find no record of his name anywhere on the death list. The office agreed to send him a form affirming that he’s alive, but the document can only be sent by mail, he was told — a process he worries will be slow.“It’s this continual drip-drop of delays,” he said.Michael Swier, the founder of the Bowery Ballroom and the Mercury Lounge in New York — and a prominent figure in the independent music world — also received notification early Wednesday that he was considered dead, and said that he was beside himself trying to understand how to correct the error.“What do I do? What kind of proof do they need?” Mr. Swier said. “Can I say over the phone, ‘It’s me’?”Representatives of the Small Business Administration did not answer questions about the erroneous death data.Michael Swier, the founder of the Bowery Ballroom and the Mercury Lounge in New York, was told he was considered dead. (He is alive.) “What do I do?” he asked. “What kind of proof do they need?”Michal Czerwonka for The New York TimesThe glitches were the latest to bedevil the program, which has suffered many delays, including a complete failure of its online system on the day it tried to start taking applications. (The application system finally opened in late April.)Some 13,000 people applied, seeking a total of $11 billion. The Small Business Administration has not yet released details on how many it has approved.In Facebook groups and on Twitter, frantic business owners have been swapping tips and trying to glean where in the application process their own claim might be.Some venues are beginning to get good news.Hugh Hallinan, the executive producer of Downtown Cabaret Theater, a nonprofit venue in Bridgeport, Conn., spent weeks checking the S.B.A.’s grant portal each day, and last Thursday learned that his theater had been approved for a $541,000 grant.On Tuesday the theater held a news conference with Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.“We’ve been in Bridgeport for 41 years, and we’ve never gotten recognition like this,” Mr. Hallinan said in an interview. “I just thought, ‘We’re going to soak it all up right now. We’re going to bask in it.’”Downtown Cabaret came close to shutting down last year. Downtown Cabaret Theater, in Bridgeport, Conn., which came close to shutting down, learned that it had been approved for a $541,000 grant. Richard Pettibone“If all patrons who had tickets called in and said, ‘I need a refund,’ it was game-over time,” Mr. Hallinan said. Instead, many opted for a credit on their account, and about a third of donated the cost of their tickets back to the venue, Mr. Hallinan said.The funding has not yet started flowing to Broadway. A spokeswoman for the Broadway League, a trade organization representing producers and theater owners, said that none of its members had notified the group about receiving application approvals. Charlotte St. Martin, the group’s president, had said last month that officials had told the group that money would start coming in by the end of May, but that deadline has now passed.And several major performing arts organizations in New York City that are planning summer or fall reopenings are also still waiting. Carnegie Hall, the New York Philharmonic, New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theater, the Public Theater and the Metropolitan Opera have not yet heard. Many will not be eligible until a later round of awards.Mr. Sitter, in Oregon, said he had no idea why the Volcanic got its award so early. Like many applicants, it had lost at least 90 percent of its revenue during the pandemic, which qualified the Volcanic for the first round of grants. Others who lost less will be eligible for awards in mid- to late June.The Volcanic received some federal money last year from an earlier round of federal pandemic relief. That got it through 2020, Mr. Sitter said. But by last month, the Volcanic was down to its last few thousand dollars, not enough to cover its rent and monthly bills for June, Mr. Sitter said. He was considering whether to sell or shut it down.With the shuttered venue grant, the Volcanic can stay open until next year, when Mr. Sitter expects its pipeline of shows to be back to normal. This weekend, it is planning to put on its first shows since last summer, at 50 percent capacity.“There’s certainly not a lot of profit going to be made here,” Mr. Sitter said. “This is simply to lift the spirits of people, to say, ‘We can kind of do this, we’re doing good, and there is a way out.’” More

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      New York’s Concert Scene Gets a Lavish New Addition: Brooklyn Made

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      The 500-capacity live venue in Bushwick will offer unique perks to musicians who play there, including a private pool and use of a loft apartment.For the last year, with the concert business mothballed by the pandemic, small clubs and theaters have warned that their survival was at risk, and dozens of venues across the country have shut down.But with concerts now coming back, something that might have seemed unthinkable just a few months ago is happening: Not only have old venues reopened their doors, but entirely new ones are sprouting up, buoyed by the hope that concert-hungry fans will help the industry come roaring back.On Sept. 30, Brooklyn Made, a new club in Bushwick, Brooklyn, will open with two nights featuring Jeff Tweedy of Wilco. Everything about the space is planned as deluxe and high-concept, from the Moroccan lamps adorning the 500-capacity performance space to the adjoining cafe and rooftop deck. Visiting artists will find an impossibly luxurious spread, including a private pool and use of a loft apartment with striking views of the Manhattan skyline.It is one of a handful of changes to the post-pandemic New York concert scene, including the return of Irving Plaza, the landmark rock club off Union Square that will reopen in August after a two-year, multimillion-dollar renovation.Brooklyn Made will open its doors to audiences on Sept. 30 with a concert by Jeff Tweedy.Lila Barth for The New York TimesFor Brooklyn Made, the club’s very existence is a bullish bet on the return of live music and the nightlife economy in New York, said Anthony Makes, a longtime player in the New York concert world who is one of the principals behind the new club.“I believe in the future, and I think everyone’s going to come back,” Makes said on a recent tour of the space, where construction machines were still whirring, but the sunny artist apartment, one level up, was an oasis of quiet.When Brooklyn Made opens its doors — other fall bookings include Greg Dulli (Oct. 2), Trombone Shorty (Oct. 4-5), Turnover (Oct. 12-13), Steve Earle (Oct. 16) and Band of Horses (Oct. 18-20) — it will be the latest independent operator in a local scene dominated by two corporate powers, Live Nation and AEG Presents.To stand out in a hypercompetitive market, Brooklyn Made wants to cater to concertgoers as well as to artists. For fans, the club will present itself as an all-day hang in the heart of hipster Brooklyn, with a cafe open from morning till night; the live room will feature up-to-the-minute lighting and sound.Brooklyn Made’s building, at 428 Troutman Street, has been a subject of local mystery for years. Lila Barth for The New York TimesNow it will host a private apartment for artists.Lila Barth for The New York TimesAnd ample space for performers to rest, before and after shows.Lila Barth for The New York TimesKelly Winrich, of the Americana band Delta Spirit, is Makes’s partner in Brooklyn Made. He said the club’s hospitality for artists — four green rooms, along with the pool and apartment — will help it stand out to musicians whose touring life can otherwise be a blur of undistinguished black-box spaces.“Some venues know how to do it right; some don’t,” Winrich said. “When they do it right, it makes a world of difference for an artist coming through.”Money makes a difference too. The club has already developed a reputation among talent agents for aggressive offers. Makes said that in many cases Brooklyn Made will pay artists virtually the entire face value of tickets, an arrangement more common among superstar tours than in the razor-thin margins of the club business.Anthony Makes, left, and Kelly Winrich, are partners in Brooklyn Made. “Some venues know how to do it right; some don’t,” Winrich said. Lila Barth for The New York Times“We are basically giving them the gross of the ticket sales,” Makes said, which he called “unheard-of in this modern era of doing business.”Makes, 52, who set up his promotion company last year, is the former president of Live Nation’s New York office, and he has also worked at the Bowery Presents, which is half-owned by AEG. Brooklyn Made will now compete with those companies for bookings.Irving Plaza, a rock venue since 1978 — and where one person died in a 2016 shooting during a T.I. concert — has gotten a major face-lift inside, with new bars, new bathrooms and improved sight lines. Its rough-around-the-edges vibe was always part of its charm, but Margaret Holmes, the general manager of the club, which is owned by Live Nation, said the changes will only improve the fan experience.“It still feels like a rock club to me,” Holmes said, where fans will be “up close to the stage, close to your favorite artists.” She added: “But it just feels nicer.”The renovated Irving Plaza in Manhattan.Halkin/Mason PhotographyIrving Plaza will return Aug. 17 with the country singer Ashley McBryde. Other shows include Noah Cyrus (Aug. 27), Ben Folds (Sept. 12) and the rapper J.I. (Sept. 16). In a sign of just how hard it is for midsize venues to secure unique bookings, the alt-rock stalwarts Guided by Voices will play both Irving Plaza (Sept. 10) and Brooklyn Made (Dec. 31).Brooklyn Made’s building, at 428 Troutman Street, has been a subject of local mystery for years. A former warehouse, it was purchased in 2011 by Charlie Kaim, the proprietor of the Maracuja bar in Williamsburg. Kaim spent eight years renovating the Troutman building, intending to create a venue called the Bushwick House of Music.Last year, as the pandemic hit, a frustrated Kaim decided to sell. “Time for some young blood in there,” he said in an interview.Winrich’s family bought the building in November for $9.4 million; in a separate transaction early last year, Winrich also took over Maracuja.Makes and Winrich, 37, will operate Brooklyn Made through their partnership. Brooklyn Made Presents, their promotion company, also books the United Palace in Manhattan and CMAC, an amphitheater in Canandaigua, N.Y.Like some venues in New York, Brooklyn Made is waiting to open its doors until pandemic restrictions are eased and it can operate at full capacity; Makes and Winrich expect that to be in the fall, if not before. But just in case a full reopening takes longer than expected, they say they are well financed and can wait.“We’ll be ready to go and the world is ready to go,” Makes said, “no matter how long that takes.” More

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      Arthur Pomposello, Impresario for a Cabaret Swan Song, Dies at 85

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      He was the host at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel during an improbable resurgence of cabaret from the 1980s to the early 2000s. He died of complications of Covid-19.This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.Arthur Pomposello, the host of the Oak Room, the cabaret supper club in the Algonquin Hotel, practiced the arts of theatricality and discretion.A dark-haired former model in a tuxedo, he parted a red curtain to allow guests inside. He glided onstage and introduced Andrea Marcovicci, for decades the Oak Room’s main attraction, as “our songbird.” He gossiped with journalists about what he called “my cabaret,” and in return the papers gave him labels like “a loquacious fixture.”But Mr. Pomposello could also work quietly. “This is cabaret,” he whispered to loud customers. “We don’t talk here.” He rearranged the tables, making light crowds appear livelier and making big crowds fit.Inspectors would check to see if the small-capacity room exceeded legal limits.“He would show them the kitchen or show them the upstairs — ‘Oh, come right this way,’” Ms. Marcovicci recalled. “They’d never see the room when it had 110 people in it. Never.”Mr. Pomposello died on May 6 at a hospital in Manhattan. He was 85. The cause was complications of Covid-19, his son Sean said.When Mr. Pomposello started at the Algonquin as a bartender, in 1980, you could still feel transported to the hotel’s famed past as a daily gathering place for writers. He once entered the lobby and noticed Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut sharing a drink. The next instant, Eudora Welty walked in.Cabaret turned a profit for only a select few, but Mr. Pomposello kept his perch at the Oak Room under several different owners of the Algonquin.Jack Manning/The New York TimesIn the middle to late 1980s, as figures like Michael Feinstein and Harry Connick Jr. launched their careers from the Oak Room, Mr. Pomposello’s responsibilities grew. He booked talent and managed the finances, keeping his perch under several different owners of the Algonquin.“I’ve not lost a penny in nine years,” he told The New York Times in 1998.When he saw his son Sean, he raved about visits from faded stars whose glow had never dimmed for Mr. Pomposello. The Nicholas brothers, tap-dancers who rose to fame in the 1930s, turned heads the night they arrived, Mr. Pomposello said.Sean recently looked through his father’s address book to invite people to the wake. “I can’t find too many friends,” Sean said. “I find a lot of cabaret stars, some of whom are no longer alive.”Arthur Pomposello was born on Nov. 19, 1935, in Harlem and grew up in the Bronx. His father, Arthur, played jazz guitar under his nickname, Scotty Bond. His mother, Concetta (Bellafatto) Pomposello, was a homemaker who went to work at the pocketbook counter in Bloomingdale’s after she and Scotty divorced, when their son was a teenager.Arthur dreamed of becoming a movie star and spent summers in Los Angeles. When that didn’t work out, he went to Michigan State University. He graduated with a degree in hotel management.Back in New York, he worked at a succession of hotels, including Hampshire House, and restaurants, including Café des Artistes. He modeled and found modest acting work. He cooked up entrepreneurial schemes like “Pompie’s Pushers,” models selling authentic Italian food from handcarts. Nothing took — until the Oak Room. Mr. Pomposello stayed until a dispute with management in 2002.Mr. Pomposello married Eunice Mahoney, a telephone operator, in 1958. They divorced in 1979. That same year he married Alicia Cirino, a bunny at the New York Playboy Club. She died of heart failure in 2007.In addition to his son Sean, Mr. Pomposello is survived by two more children from his first marriage, Peri Kish-Pomposello and Chris Pomposello, and five grandchildren. A son from his second marriage, Adam, died in an accident in 2008.After he left the Oak Room, Mr. Pomposello worked as a night concierge at the Plaza Hotel until the pandemic last spring, when he was 84. Mr. Pomposello never stopped hoping to find a new venue of his own. In 2015 and 2016, he organized several performances at restaurants of an act he called “Pompie’s Place,” which featured jazz and blues singers and Mr. Pomposello himself as the impresario of an imaginary club.The discovery of a new restaurant or a theater with a large lobby set his gears turning, Sean Pomposello said: “He’d get this wistful look in his face, looking around the place, and thinking about how he’s going to book cabaret.” More

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      Come to the Cabaret, Old Chum. Or at Least Stream It.

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      New concerts from Sutton Foster, Jeremy Jordan and Marilyn Maye offer examples of what the most intimate art form can and can’t do.Cabaret is a magpie medium, plucking pieces from the world’s songbook and repurposing them to tell more-or-less personal stories.Whether the result is sublime or mortifying (or, more typically, in between) depends on how cleverly singers shape their material to fit the contours of the tales they’re telling. Vocal beauty is a secondary matter — as any number of old-school performers, like the swinging Sylvia Syms and the barking Elaine Stritch, proved by keeping the form alive even when they had almost no voice left.But the pandemic has nearly done the old bird in; the intimacy of most cabaret performance spaces, and the likelihood that a singer may spit in your chicken Kiev, have made live shows impossible. If there have nevertheless been some astounding virtual concerts in the tradition, including one Audra McDonald gave for a New York City Center gala, that doesn’t make the real thing any less valuable.Until live cabaret’s day, or rather its evening, returns, high-profile offerings from Sutton Foster, Jeremy Jordan and Marilyn Maye are here to entertain and instruct us. These three performers sing very well indeed, in very different styles and with very different material. But it’s their completely divergent uses of the form that make them stand out as examples of what cabaret can and can’t do best.One thing it can’t do at all is refuse to tell a story, even if that’s what a singer intends. Foster’s concert “Bring Me to Light,” also for City Center, tries hard anyway, deliberately defocusing its star and keeping psychology on a very short leash. The effect is so extreme that Foster seems more like the host of the occasion than the occasion itself, pushing her spotlight onto guests including Kelli O’Hara, Raúl Esparza and Joaquina Kalukango, who steals the show with “The Life of the Party,” from Andrew Lippa’s “The Wild Party.” Foster even gives a solo — “Here I Am,” from Disney’s “Camp Rock” — to Wren Rivera, a student of hers at Ball State University.In other words, despite having starred in seven Broadway shows and winning two Tony Awards, the first for “Thoroughly Modern Millie” in 2002, Foster is a sharer, not a self-aggrandizer. Instead of filling gaps between songs with the de rigueur résumé-by-chitchat, she chipperly interviews her pals. And though the title of the show is taken from the finale of “Violet,” the Jeanine Tesori-Brian Crawley musical Foster led at City Center in 2013 and on Broadway in 2014, the tunestack of “Bring Me to Light” tends to avoid material strongly associated with its star. Mostly, it offers songs she is unlikely to be assigned onstage (“How to Handle a Woman”) or that come from other genres entirely. She and O’Hara make a lovely duet of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides, Now.”This is all professionally rendered — as is the show itself. (The director is Leigh Silverman; the music director, Michael Rafter.) It looks fantastic in the plush if empty City Center auditorium. But at no point does it offer us the Sutton Foster who is so commanding when she plays a role that she can disappear into it before emerging transformed. Actually, at one point it does, when she bounces through the backstage hallways in jeans and then, in a nice jump cut, pops onto the stage in a sparkly gown. The song is the ambivalently titled “Hey, Look Me Over.”From Sutton Foster’s “Bring Me to Light,” at New York City Center.If Foster’s show tells the story of a star who avoids too much drama, “Jeremy Jordan: Carry On” heads in the opposite direction. It is bursting with drama, more than its little canoe of gorgeously sung songs can carry without tipping.The premise is both affecting and overwrought: that when he became a father in 2019, Jordan realized he had to unburden himself of unresolved conflicts from his own childhood before he could properly parent. Hence the pun in the show’s title, which is not just a command to keep going but also an actual piece of luggage filled with keepsakes that represent youthful traumas he must unpack.These are not the kind of traumas that are too piddling to earn a hearing; Jordan tells a brutal tale, involving abuse, drugs and a catastrophic car accident. The problem is that there aren’t many songs available to reflect and shape those traumas, so he must jury-rig existing ones (or, as in two cases, write new ones) to make a case for singing at all. Even so, as in a jukebox musical, they rarely fit, especially the ones associated with his own career, like “Broadway, Here I Come!” from “Smash,” and “Santa Fe” from “Newsies.”From Jeremy Jordan’s “Carry On,” at Feinstein’s/54 Below.Pop songs, including Billy Joel’s “Lullaby,” work better, but overall, the show is too heavy for a cabaret act and too skimpy and unvaried for a musical. (Aside from two medleys, there are only eight numbers.) Attempts to switch up the texture with asides, rueful jokes and painfully scripted banter with his pianist and music director, Benjamin Rauhala, only heighten the feeling that the material is as yet too raw for such a refined format.Perhaps “Carry On,” filmed without an audience at Feinstein’s/54 Below, would have been better off if Jordan hadn’t written, directed and performed it all himself. But learning to calibrate the emotional temperature of a room — and of one’s material — is a skill that comes only with experience. Jordan is 36; Foster, 46; together, they do not add up to Marilyn Maye’s 93 — an age that helps explain the distillation of her gifts and also her preference for classic material. “Broadway, the Maye Way,” another installment in the Feinstein’s/54 Below series that presented Jordan’s concert, consists mostly of show tunes, heavy on Jerry Herman, from musicals she’s been in, although never on Broadway itself.Maye, who started singing professionally in the 1940s, has run the gamut of outlets: radio, television, film, nightclubs, regional revivals, summer stock, concert halls and now cabaret. That is by no means a downward trajectory, but if anyone has the life experience to sing songs like “I’m Still Here,” from “Follies,” she does, with her “three cheers and dammit” verve. That would be enough in this repertoire, but Maye also brings to bear her wonderfully natural phrasing, her generous but not overstated swing and her big wallop of a voice in fantastic shape.From Marilyn Maye’s “Broadway, the Maye Way,” at Feinstein’s/54 Below.It’s hard to say whether she’s so good at singing optimistic Broadway barnburners like “I’m Still Here,” “Step to the Rear” and “Golden Rainbow” because they were written for voices like hers (she recorded the original hit version of “Cabaret” in 1966, and sings it again here) or because she has chosen them carefully to reflect what appears to be her actual personality.Probably, it’s both. The moto perpetuo arrangements by her musical director, Tedd Firth, certainly highlight her bubbliness and drive, but when she sings “Fifty Percent” from “Ballroom,” a number about a widow in love with a married man, the alteration in its effect is clearly coming from her. It’s no longer a torch song but a glass-half-full anthem.What Maye has mastered is the proportioning of restraint and release that allows the safe exchange of emotion between singer and audience. In a small room — and online, every room is small — that’s key. It’s how cabaret even under lockdown can remain an affecting art and not just a jukebox musical with sequins.Sutton Foster: Bring Me to LightThrough May 31; nycitycenter.orgJeremy Jordan: Carry OnThrough June 17; 54below.comMarilyn Maye: Broadway, the Maye WayThrough June 19; 54below.com More

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      How to Pretend You’re in New Orleans Tonight

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      While your travel plans may be on hold, you can pretend you’re somewhere new for the night. Around the World at Home invites you to channel the spirit of a new place each week with recommendations on how to explore the culture, all from the comfort of your home.Over the course of the decade since I first visited, I have often imagined myself at home in New Orleans. I think of the syncopated shuffle of a snare drum, the simple pleasure of an afternoon walk with a to-go beer in hand and the candy-colored shotgun houses that sink into the ground at odd angles. And so it wasn’t a huge surprise when, at the beginning of 2021, I found myself packing up my life and moving to the Crescent City for a few months. Why not be somewhere I love at this difficult time, I thought? Why not live in my daydreams for a little while?From left: Bike paraders on Frenchmen Street the week before Mardi Gras; a shotgun house; the Pete Fountain jazz funeral second line paraded during Jazz Fest in 2016.From left: Emily Kask for The New York Times; Sebastian Modak; Bryan Tarnowski for The New York TimesNew Orleans is above all else resilient. Mardi Gras parades were canceled this year, though it didn’t stop New Orleanians from finding ways to celebrate (nothing ever will). In recent months, brass bands have taken to street corners in front of masked, socially distant spectators instead of packed night clubs. Strangers still chat you up about the Saints from their front porches. My visions of this city may still be filtered through the fuzzy lens of a visitor, but I know I’ll be pretending I’m still there long after I’m gone. Here are a few ways you can, too.A brass band plays on Frenchman Street the week before Mardi Gras.Emily Kask for The New York TimesTurn up that radioNew Orleans music is a collage of sounds: it’s the birthplace of jazz, of the frenetic dance music known as bounce, popularized by superstars like Big Freedia, the call-and-response songs of Mardi Gras Indians, and so much more. For an overview of the sounds of this loud, percussive city there is no better place to start than the wonderfully eclectic WWOZ, a community-supported radio station that has been on the air since 1980. Luckily, you can listen to it from anywhere online. It’s only a matter of time before you start getting to know the various D.J.s and tuning in for your favorites.From left: musicians Big Freedia, Rebirth Brass Band and Kermit RuffinsFrom left: Bennett Raglin/Getty Images; Bryan Tarnowski for The New York Times; L. Kasimu Harris for The New York TimesPut on a curated playlist“New Orleans is not a periphery music scene,” Soul Sister, who has hosted a show on WWOZ for more than 25 years, told me. “New Orleans is the reason for it all.” Soul Sister was one of a handful of local experts I consulted in putting together a playlist that will send you straight to New Orleans. Among her recommendations are a bounce classic by DJ Jubilee and the music of Rebirth Brass Band, which brings her back to afternoons spent celebrating on the street: “It reminds me of the energy and freedom of being at the second line parades on Sundays, dancing through all the neighborhoods nonstop for three or four hours,” she said.On this playlist, you will also find some classics — the rollicking piano of Professor Longhair, for example, starts it off — recommended by Keith Spera who writes about music for the Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate. By the end of the playlist, you will undoubtedly agree with Mr. Spera’s assessment of New Orleans music: “There is no singular style of ‘New Orleans music’ — is it jazz? Rhythm & blues? Funk? Bounce? — but you know it when you hear it.”The Mosquito Supper Club is a Cajun restaurant in the Uptown neighborhood of New Orleans. Denny CulbertExpand your cookbook collectionJust like its music, New Orleans food contains multitudes: Creole, Cajun, African, Vietnamese and other flavors collide like nowhere else. A fine place to start is with the Dooky Chase Cookbook, the collected recipes of Leah Chase, who died in 2019, of Dooky Chase’s Restaurant, an institution that has hosted civil rights leaders, presidents and countless regulars at its location in Treme, the neighborhood where jazz was born. Next, tap into the Cajun influence on the city with “Mosquito Supper Club: Cajun Recipes from a Disappearing Bayou,” by Melissa M. Martin who oversees a restaurant of the same name in the Uptown neighborhood of New Orleans. Ms. Martin recommends making her grandmother’s oyster soup. “I can picture her stirring a pot on Bayou Petit Caillou and seasoning a broth with salty Louisiana oysters, Creole tomatoes and salted pork,” Ms. Martin said. “The marriage of three ingredients transports me to the tiny fishing village I call home, where salt was and still is always in the air.”From left: Velma Marie’s oyster soup; President George W. Bush with Leah Chase at Dooky Chase’s Restaurant in 2007; Linda Green’s ya-ka-mein.From left: Denny Culbert; Evan Vucci/Associated Press; via Linda GreenCook up some noodle soup, Nola style“It is New Orleans’ best kept secret,” the chef Linda Green, better known as Ms. Linda, told me when I asked about her specialty. Festival and second line crowds come to her for ya-ka-mein, a salty beef noodle soup often eaten as a late-night snack or a next-morning cure (hence its “Old Sober” moniker). The dish’s origins are mysterious: a product of cultural exchange involving, depending on who you ask, Black soldiers returning from the Korean War or Chinese railroad workers arriving in the 1800s. Ms. Linda’s family recipe is also a mystery (she credits the globe-trotting chef Anthony Bourdain for encouraging her to keep it secret). But she has shared versions of her recipe, so you can try your hand at it at home. “That will get you pretty close to the real thing,” she said with a wink I could almost hear over the phone.First Street, in the Garden District, is lined with ornate mansions that are still lived in today. The pink Italianate mansion, above, is the Carroll-Crawford House.Sebastian ModakWalk it offNew Orleans is a city full of history and it can be hard to know what you are looking at without some guidance. You can feel like you are on your own personal walking tour thanks to Free Tours by Foot, which has transferred their expertise to YouTube. You can now stroll the grandiose Garden District, pull away the sensationalism around New Orleans’ Voodoo traditions and take a deep dive into jazz history in Treme. “New Orleans is full of painful history, and it’s also known as one of the most fun cities in the world,” Andrew Farrier, one of the tour guides, said. “I think it’s useful for all of us to know how those two things can live so close to each other.”From left: the Bywater, the Sazerac and the Brandy Crusta — all New Orleans inventions.From left: Drew Stubbs; Craig Lee for The New York Times; Melina Hammer for The New York TimesFix a drinkContrary to so many pop culture depictions of the city, New Orleans’ drinking scene extends far beyond the vortex of debauchery that is Bourbon Street. There are the classic New Orleans inventions, of course, like the Sazerac, but for something a little different, turn to one of the city’s most revered mixologists. Chris Hannah, of Jewel of the South, invented the Bywater as a New Orleanian spin on the Brooklyn. “Among the ingredient substitutions I swapped rum for rye as a cheeky nod to our age-old saying, ‘New Orleans is the northernmost tip of the Caribbean’,” Mr. Hannah said.Chris Hannah, making a cocktail behind the bar, is a revered mixologist and the co-owner of Jewel of the South. L. Kasimu Harris for The New York TimesHave a little partyWhile it’s impossible to fully channel the spirit of a New Orleans dive bar at home, combine the playlist above with your quarantine pod and a “set-up” and you might just get close. What is a set-up, you ask? It’s a staple dive bar order that will get you a half-pint of your liquor of choice, a mixer and a stack of plastic cups. It’s also an often-overlooked part of New Orleans drinking culture, according to Deniseea Taylor, a cocktail enthusiast who goes by the Cocktail Goddess. “When you find a bar with a set-up, you are truly in Nola,” Ms. Taylor said. “First time I experienced a set-up, it was paired with a $5 fish plate, a match made in heaven.”From left: a still from Lily Keber’s documentary “Buckjumping”; the cover of Sarah M. Broom’s book “The Yellow House”; Jurnee Smollett and Samuel L. Jackson in the 1997 film, “Eve’s Bayou.”Mairzy Doats Productions (far left); Trimark Pictures (far right)Wind down with a story or twoIt should come as no surprise that New Orleans, with its triumphant and tragic history, its syncretic culture and its pervasive love of fun, is a place of stories. There is a wide canon of literature to choose from. For something recent, pick up “The Yellow House,” a memoir by Sarah M. Broom, which the Times book critic Dwight Garner called “forceful, rolling and many-chambered.” Going further back in time, try “Coming Through Slaughter,” a fictionalized rendition of the life of jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden by Michael Ondaatje.If you are in the mood for a documentary, Clint Bowie, artistic director of the New Orleans Film Festival, recommends Lily Keber’s “Buckjumping,” which spotlights the city’s dancers. For something fictional, Mr. Bowie points to “Eve’s Bayou” directed by Kasi Lemmons. It’s hard to forget New Orleans is a city built on a swamp when you feel the crushing humidity or lose your footing on ruptured streets, and this movie will take you farther into that ethereal environment. “Set in the Louisiana bayou country in the ’60s, we could think of no better film to spark Southern Gothic daydreams about a visit to the Spanish moss-draped Louisiana swamps,” Mr. Bowie said.Glimpses of south Louisiana’s swampy flora can be found in New Orleans’ Audubon Park.Sebastian ModakHow are you going to channel the spirit of New Orleans in your home? Share your ideas in the comments.To keep up with upcoming articles in this series, sign up for our At Home newsletter. More

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      Testing, One, Two. Fans Flock to an Experimental Indoor Rock Concert.

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      An organizer said this Barcelona event, one of several planned in Europe, was “a small but important step toward normality.” The listeners there basked in being part of an audience again.BARCELONA, Spain — Mireia Serret, a 21-year old student at the University of Barcelona, said that she was not a big fan of the band that played here on Saturday, nor does she normally like large crowds.Nevertheless, Serret had snapped up one of the 5,000 tickets to Europe’s biggest indoor rock concert since the start of the pandemic because “it had just been too long since I was last able to dance and have fun at a concert.”Organized by a group of Spanish music promoters as part of an initiative called “Festivals for Safe Culture,” the concert in the Palau de Sant Jordi was presented as Europe’s boldest effort to get thousands into an indoor venue, without seating or mandatory social distancing. The sole act was Love of Lesbian, a Spanish indie rock band, which formed before Serret was born. “For me, this isn’t about whether I really like their music, but about being able to feel and live their music, right next to so many other people,” Serret said.The sole act was Love of Lesbian, a Spanish indie rock band.Albert Gea/ReutersTrial concert or festival events have been held in several European countries, including in Germany and the Netherlands, as part of efforts to allow crowds to form again to see live music. The British government will also run a series of test events next month, including one at a nightclub in Liverpool, also without requiring social distancing.Europe’s famed summer music festivals, which draw tens of thousands of fans to open outdoor spaces, are in doubt this year despite the tests. Several major festivals have already canceled their June lineups, including Rock am Ring at the Nürburgring racetrack in Germany and Sonar festival in Barcelona. Sonar’s management pushed their flagship festival to 2022 and is planning two smaller events in October. Still, Roskilde, Denmark’s biggest, hopes to go on in June with acts including the rapper Kendrick Lamar. The Danish government said last week that it aims to restart pop concerts from May 6 onward with the help of a “corona passport” that will allow people to show their status of vaccination, proof of recent negative tests for the virus or documentation they have recovered from Covid-19.At a time when countries like France and Italy have recently put their residents back under lockdown to help stop another wave of infection, the people behind the Barcelona event said their goal was to look ahead.Albert Gea/ReutersLluis Gene/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOne of the organizers, Ventura Barba, the executive director of the Sonar festival, said in an interview that Saturday’s concert was “a small but important step toward normality.” Barba forecast that the Barcelona concert would break even, but he stressed that it was “not a commercial project,” nor could it be replicated for festivals that operate over several days and with other financial constraints. Ticket sales accounted for 36 percent of the Barcelona concert’s budget of about €250,000, with 30 percent covered by public authorities, 24 percent from private sponsors and 10 percent from the promoters themselves.A hospital team helped test the concertgoers for Covid-19 before the event, using as their model a smaller concert last December in another Barcelona venue, the Sala Apolo. At the Apolo, the audience of 500 people was tested before the show, as well as another 500 people who acted as a control group, and everybody got tested again eight days later. The Apolo’s concertgoers all tested negative, while two people in the control group tested positive, according to Josep Maria Llibre, a specialist in infectious diseases from the Germans Trias i Pujol hospital northeast of Barcelona who is also monitoring the Palau concert.Ahead of Saturday’s concert, six people tested positive, according to the organizers. However, the medical team is using neither a control group nor postconcert testing, relying instead on public medical records to track whether any concertgoers will later get Covid-19.Dr. Llibre said the decision was made both for financial and practical reasons. He acknowledged in an interview that the tracking method used Saturday would be less accurate than that used at the Apolo, but he argued it could still help show that a safely-organized concert “is not a super-spreading event,” contrary to what some might presume. “In the case of concerts, there has been very little or no data, but it has been empirically assumed that it is a very high risk to have people dancing together,” he said.The Palau can welcome 17,000 people, but the 5,000 ticketholders were not allowed into its stands and instead were kept divided within three areas of the dance floor, while having to wear FFP2 face masks (the European standard) provided by the organizers.Healthcare workers prepare to collect swab samples from concertgoers before the show.Albert Gea/ReutersOn Saturday, some concertgoers said they felt fully reassured by the safety protocols, but a few others said they had briefly hesitated before going.“If I had not been vaccinated already, I really would have thought twice about coming here,” said Cristina Delgado, a doctor. But Ana, her sister, who was also vaccinated because she works in health care, felt differently. “I was going to come whatever, because I want to save culture and return us to normal life,” she said.Inés Villasuso, a 24-year old nurse, also said that “it would have been better to get everybody tested again later, to have scientific evidence that can really convince the authorities that such a big event can be held safely.” But she and her twin sister, Eva, agreed that the concert outstripped their expectations. “It felt like living a total dream,” Eva said.In an interview before the concert, Julián Saldarriaga, a member of Love of Lesbian, said that the band’s decision to perform had received very broad support, but also generated “some criticism, from people who have called us irresponsible or who say that we only care about money.” But for his band, he said, “we really saw this as an opportunity to take part in the recovery of culture.”Rather than featuring a supporting act, the concert was preceded by a series of videos about Covid-19, shown on the big stage screen and interspersed with hits from the distant past — like “Come Together” and “Here Comes the Sun,” by The Beatles — whose themes warmed up the crowd.To comply with the safety protocols, on Saturday, concertgoers visited one of three smaller Barcelona music venues to get a rapid antigen test for Covid-19. The cost was included in the €23 ticket price.Christiana Guldager, a photographer, said that she cried before her test at the Razzmatazz nightclub. “I’ve been dancing so often in that place that it made me feel very emotional to find it instead converted into a mini-hospital,” she said.Santi Balmes, the lead singer, invited the crowd to deliver the chorus of a song. Lluis Gene/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLater that night in the Palau, emotions also ran high. The dance floor was lit up by cellphones as well as white face masks. When Santi Balmes, the lead singer, invited the crowd to deliver the chorus of a song, he got a powerful response. “Woohoo, you still remember how to sing!” Balmes shouted back. As he brought the concert to a close, Balmes told the crowd, “the band is not important: What is important is the experience and the experience is incredible.”Pablo García, 27, an illustrator, agreed. “Of course I never stopped listening to music, but you really need to be at a concert to feel the bass right inside your heart.”Alex Marshall contributed reporting from London. More