Steve Ross: Travels With My Piano

The Cabaret at Savor

The late Mabel Mercer is generally regarded as a seminal figure in the art form now known as cabaret - so much so that the annual Cabaret Convention in New York now has as award named after her. Last month the second annual Mabel Award went to Steve Ross, in recognition of “his four decades of style, taste, flair and communicative power as the American troubadour”.

None of that will come as a surprise to local audiences. Ross has been a regular here, both at the Grand Center Cabaret series and now in a new concert series at the Savor Restaurant in the Central West End. Set in the intimate Flim-Flam Room, which seats around 60, the Savor cabaret series offers what may the ideal venue for Ross. Debonair, witty and charismatic, Ross establishes an immediate connection with his audience that's all the more effective when nobody in that audience is more than 20 feet away.

Ross is an international traveler with a particular fondness for Paris and London, so it's only appropriate that Travels With My Piano focuses on those two cities as well as on his home base of New York. As a result, the evening includes a lot of familiar material, including Cole Porter's “I Love Paris”, “C'est Magnifique”, “You Don't Know Paree” and, happily, the endlessly inventive lyrics of “Can-Can”; Gershwin's “Foggy Day”; and Noel Coward's two great urban anthems, “London Pride” and “I Happen to Like New York”.

Ross is a man of eclectic tastes, however, so you also get Coward's delightful “Why Do the Wrong People Travel” and inspirational “Sail Away” (both from his 1961 show Sail Away - a flop despite the presence of the great Elaine Stritch in the lead), Bob Merril's wistful “Mira” from Carnival, and Arlen and Harburg's “Lydia the Tattooed Lady”. There are a number of rarely-heard gems as well, including Portia Nelson's “Confessions of a New Yorker” (in which she confesses to being “in hate/love” with the town), Murray Grand's droll “The Spider and the Fly” and one of Ross' own compositions, the nostalgic “Manhattan Moon”. There's even Irving Berlin's “Harlem on Her Mind”, from the “Headline Musical” As Thousands Cheer - an uncharitably chauvinistic take on Josephine Baker's spectacular Parisian career.

Paris, in fact, provides the inspiration for well over a third of the program. Like many of the songwriters he most admires such as Gershwin, Porter and Coward, Steve Ross has a special affection for Paris, where he recently had the distinction of being the first American to play the Bar Vendôme at the legendary Paris Ritz Hotel. So, in addition to the numbers about the City of Light cited above, Ross also treats the audience to a set of songs, in French, by the noted singer/songwriter Charles Trenet, including “La Mer” - made famous by Bobby Darin as “Beyond the Sea”. He also repeats his instrumental tribute to Edith Piaf, which made such a strong impression during his set at Chez Leon last fall.

Ross delivers all of this, as usual, with a breezy elegance that's reminiscent of Fred Astaire or the late Bobby Short. Listening to him, it's easy to imagine that you've been transported back to a late-1930s RKO musical, lounging around a small table in an Art Deco rooftop nightclub with a glittering Manhattan skyline visible in the background instead of the Cecil B. DeMille Egyptian décor of the Flim-Flam Room.

That's why the New York Times has called Steve Ross the “Crown Prince of New York cabaret" and also why you should reserve your tickets now by calling 314-531-0220 or surfing over to licketytix.com. Tickets for the show can be purchased with or without dinner, although given the high quality of Savor's food you'll probably want to enjoy both. It's what Fred and Ginger would do, after all.

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