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about: Regina Weinreich

Category: Music

  • My Fair Lady at Bay Street Theater: Eliza Finds “A Room Somewhere”

    Based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 Pygmalian and Gabriel Pascal’s 1938 film, the Lerner and Loewe musical My Fair Lady gets a smart revival under Michael Arden’s expert direction at Bay Street Theater. You know the story: a lowly flower seller, Eliza Doolittle, morphs from guttersnipe to goddess aided by the elocution lessons of one Henry…

  • Hamptons Journal: Robert Wilson: Art with Edge at the Watermill Center / Adrian Nivola at The Drawing Room

    Against a wall proclaiming “Make America Great Again” in blood red, an electric chair did not seem out of place. Not for nothing was the Watermill Center’s annual gala called “Fada: House of Madness.” Created by Pussy Riot, the work augured the ironies of installations throughout Robert Wilson’s foundation’s ample grounds. Even though rain threatened…

  • Leona Lewis in Cats: Welcome Back to the Junkyard

    Comparisons to the original long-running 1982 musical, Cats, will be inevitable, but even if you have never seen Cats before, as I have not, the revival of Cats at the Neil Simon Theater is simply splendid. I remember when it opened back in the day and so many viewers pondered, what’s the story? Just cats…

  • Hamptons Journal: Nona Hendryx Pays Tribute to Bowie at LongHouse Reserve Jubilee/ Richard Mishaan’s Design at Guild Hall, and the East Hampton Historical Society

    Jack Lenor Larsen’s LongHouse Reserve, home to a spectacular sculpture garden including Yoko Ono’s “Wishing Tree,” became the site of great music, food, and art, in “serious moonlight,” its 25th year celebration. As maidens in midnight flowy frocks danced around a reflecting pool, partiers slurped oysters and sipped peach bellinis, gathering for a piano recital by…

  • Lena Hall at the Café Carlyle: “Oh! You Pretty Things”

    A whiff of David Bowie hung over the air at the Café Carlyle as Lena Hall opened her two-week run. Whipping her head punk style, Hall treated her audience to her bad girl history with boys as a way of explaining how a nice girl got here, musically. “I’m pretty sure no one has done…

  • Yo Yo Ma Crosses Borders: The Music of Strangers: Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble

    Typical of Yo Yo Ma: he hides behind the scenes. A prime mover of musical happenings, this world famous, prodigy cellist recedes into the backdrop, even when the event is about him, as in Morgan Neville’s new documentary, The Music of Strangers. You expect an interview with the maestro about his life and work, some…

  • Herb Alpert and Lani Hall Bring “A Taste of Honey” to the Café Carlyle

    Herb Alpert kept checking in about his pin stripes, asking a rapt audience, some of whom traveled from Florida just to hear him perform at the Café Carlyle for opening night this week: “Was I wearing this suit?” Like a woman who does not want to repeat an outfit for the same group, he joked,…

  • Celebrating with Megan Hilty at the Café Carlyle: Homage to Rosemary Clooney

    It was a big night for Megan Hilty on Tuesday, not only the opening of her two-week engagement at the Café Carlyle, but she’d garnered a Tony nomination that morning for her comedic bombshell turn in the revival of Noises Off! “And I wasn’t even singing,” she exuded, her blond curls taken back into a…

  • Chita Rivera’s Vamp at Café Carlyle

    Nobody moves like Chita Rivera. With all due respect to Catherine Zeta-Jones who earned an Oscar for her film role as Velma in Chicago, with one quick pelvic thrust in director Rob Marshall’s direction for Rivera’s opening night at the Carlyle, Chita Rivera blows away all competition. Of course she originated the role of Velma…

  • Leaving Dublin: Sing Street Premieres

    The essential ingredients in John Carney’s films: music and heart—see Once (2007) and Begin Again (2013)— bubble up in ample supply in his new one, Sing Street. The movie had its premiere Tuesday night at Metrograph, a new old space on Ludlow and Canal, just around the corner from necktie designer Alexander Olch’s chic boutique on Orchard.…

  • Katherine Jenkins at the Café Carlyle

    At Café Carlyle this week, Katherine Jenkins’ magnificent voice fills the intimate room with Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” even before she gets to the stage, a wonder in a strapless magnetic blue ball gown. Billed as a Welsh superstar, a title you would never dispute, she sings opera, folk songs, and show tunes, and tells tales of…

  • Rumer Willis Debuts at the Café Carlyle

    Rumer Willis, eldest daughter of Demi Moore and Bruce Willis may have her own take on love. At 28, she’s a headliner at the famed Café Carlyle with a jazzy, pop show that looks at love from many angles. Covering Doris Day’s “Perhaps,” she imagines a new honesty in the cha-cha beat. For Buddy Johnson’s…

  • Steve Martin Plays Banjo for Bright Star’s Opening Night

    The sweet twang of bluegrass is just the right sound for the sweet happy ending of “Bright Star,” a musical based on a newspaper item found by Edie Brickell describing a miracle. Working with Steve Martin, a not so wild and crazy guy in his current incarnation as Americana icon, the two have composed country…

  • Steven Page at the Café Carlyle: “Heal Thyself: Past, Present, and Future”

    Steven Page, a guy-next-door type who co-founded a Canadian pop band called the Barenaked Ladies, and left to pursue a solo career in 2009, performs at the Café Carlyle for two weeks. You won’t be singing along to his tunes of day-to-day male angst. That’s because his tunes are not familiar: he has composed all of…

  • Joan Osborne: Tangled Up in Blue at the Café Carlyle

    Joan Osborne’s many fans expected her to sing her signature “One of Us” at the Café Carlyle this week, but instead she sang a specially designed show of Bob Dylan tunes, and had us all in a head bobbing sing-along. “Who knew the Carlyle could become a hootenanny,” she quipped after telling tales of performing…

  • Mavis! On HBO: I’ll Take You There

    Aretha’s no Mavis! The declaration gets a laugh in Jessica Edwards’ documentary Mavis! on HBO. Last week’s premiere screening at the Alliance Francais, was the film party of the season: inspiring at 76, Mavis Staple is a dynamo. When Edwards heard her perform at the band shell in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, she knew she had…

  • Rita Wilson at the Café Carlyle: Picturing Tom Hanks

    “I’m in a roomful of people I know,” Rita Wilson began her intimate set at the Café Carlyle on Thursday. Though this was not opening night, the room took on an extra glow: on one side sat Michael J. Fox, on the other, Tom Brokaw, Carolina Herrera, Ken Auletta, Richard Cohen, and William Ivey Long…

  • Carol Composer Carter Burwell: An Interview

    Todd Haynes’ film Carol, an evocative love story set in the 1950’s, adapted from an edgy Patricia Highsmith novel, The Price of Salt, is nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Original Score, composed by Carter Burwell. His music can be heard in several current movies including the Oscar nominated animated Anomalisa, and the Coen…

  • “Til it Happens to You:” Diane Warren’s Oscar-Nominated Collaboration with Lady Gaga

    The Hunting Ground, a powerful documentary from filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, shines a light on the widespread phenomenon of rape on college campuses. The film’s music supervisor Bonnie Greenberg called Diane Warren to write the music. The prolific and popular songwriter with 7 Oscar nods immediately said yes. Now, with “Til it Happens…

  • Simple Song #3 in Youth: An Interview with Composer David Lang

    In Paolo Sorrentino’s movie Youth, Michael Caine plays a retired composer on holiday at a spa in the Swiss Alps. He hears a young student practicing the composition for which he is best known. The precocious boy says his professor finds it easy to learn, and continues, “It’s more than that. It is beautiful.” Caine’s character…

  • John Lloyd Young at the Café Carlyle: A Jersey Boy Goes Rogue

    Trading in the tux for leathers, John Lloyd Young used aviator glasses to hide his prom date good looks, but this makeover did not deter his devoted fans on opening night of his set, “Yours Truly,” at the Café Carlyle. Yes, there was no shortage of Jersey Boys hits with “Sherry” and “Can’t Take My…

  • Erin Markey’s Main Squeeze: A Ride on the Irish Cream

    Opening night for Erin Markey’s new musical, A Ride on the Irish Cream at the Abrons Arts Center was so packed, cushions had to accommodate viewers on the floor. Okay, an opening is usually friends and family, and judging by the crowd, Markey and her partner Becca Blackwell have an ample supply, but now this…

  • David Bowie: In Memoriam

    I was a huge Bowie fan back in day, which made it really strange that I did not recognize him when I met him backstage at The Bottom Line during a Steve Reich and his 18 Musicians concert. This light haired, well-groomed guy stood there in an argyle vest and pegged pants. Maybe I was…

  • Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway: A Blessing on Your Head, Mazel Tov!

    Our first glimpse of Tevye at the Broadway Theater in the splendid revival of the much beloved 1964 musical, Fiddler on the Roof, he looks like a tourist in a red parka, much like post-Holocaust Jews scouring European towns for traces of ancestry, and life before–before pogroms and genocide drove them out. Soon this figure…

  • David Amram at 85: Splendor in the Grass at The Theater for the New City

    Billed as “Back to Where it All Began,” David Amram’s program for last week’s engagement at The Theater for the New City, was a continuation of his 85th birthday celebration, a party that maybe began on his actual birthday in November, but knowing David, may never actually cease till his 86th.  It was supposed to…