Part Three of a Series: Things My Director Taught Me

By Kathleen France

Our coverage of the narrowing-down of the Metropolitan Room's NYC summer singing contest continues this week with the weekly observations by one of last year's contestants who went on to do her own successful show, a MAC nominee in the Debut category.

See MetropolitanRoom.com for the list of the 19 who will be competing THIS Monday, the ones who made the cut from the big pool described in these reports. There you can find more info on this and their full schedule of shows of all kinds. See also Peter Napolitano's columns, "What Was I Thinking?" for some observations. Now here is Kathleen's look at the last part of the first round:

Night three of our competition had the largest number of performers yet. Twenty hopeful singers prepared to go on stage, and as they were anxiously awaiting their sound checks, I got to speak with them. I wanted to know how these singers heard of the MetroStar Talent Challenge, what motivated them to enter the contest, what styles and musical genres they enjoy singing, and what they do for a living to pay the bills while pursuing their art. One thing I love about cabaret, is that it is an eclectic mix of people celebrating various styles of music. On any particular night of the week, at our numerous clubs around the city, you can find a show that fits the style of music you like best. It can also be an educational experience, seeing something you would not normally attend, such as being introduced to new songwriters or a period of music we don't hear as often nowadays, making old music new again. The last Monday of July was no exception and, as these talented singers took the stage, I knew a little bit more about them before hearing them perform, and it was great.

The first person I ran into was Anna P. Brown. She sang "Loving You," a hit for Minnie Riperton, written by the late singer and her husband, Richard Rudolph. Anna is a singer/songwriter, and her friend, Tanesha Warren -- who was in the contest last year and is now on the national tour of The Color Purple -- told her all about it. Anna loves to sing soulful R & B songs. Karen Bella Bonkowski is also a songwriter and decided to sing one of her originals entitled "Love, Love, Love." Emma White, a graduate of the Berklee College of Music, also performed an original song she had written, called "Peter." I was so impressed that these performers were also songwriters. I have tried to write music over the years, and just can't do it, so anytime I come across someone with that talent, I am extremely impressed. It is no easy task.

Most people had heard about the contest through friends who had done it previously, or from family members. Alexandra Frederick, a music teacher, who did a beautiful rendition of "Sous le ciel de Paris," made famous by Edith Piaf, heard about the competition from Sarah Rice who was in the Top 10 last year. Among the competitors this year is her friend Janice Hall, who was on the roster the first of the three nights of preliminaries. Jenna Tomsko's friend Stearns Matthews was the first runner-up in Season One's competition, has since done his own shows and has been in the audience this year. Jenna told me it had been awhile since she had been singing, and wanted to get back into performing again in this year's MetroStar competition. She sang "Just to Look at Him." She's also in classes to become a personal trainer and training to be in a marathon, so I have a feeling she's going to have a lot of Hims looking at Her as she's running by them! Christopher Michael McLamb did the song "Let It Sing," and his style is primarily soul and R & B. He heard about the competition from last year's third-place winner, Carole J. Bufford, whom he'd came to support. Ruben Ramos has been doing a show at Don't Tell Mama, performing some works by composer, Rob LaRocca. He wants to do his own show at the Metropolitan Room and sang the song, "A Change in Me" from the musical Beauty and the Beast.

Alison Nusbaum works at Don't Tell Mama, doing piano bar there. She heard about the competition from her co-workers: Season One Winner Anne Steele and Winner of Season Two, Liz Lark Brown. Those Don't Tell Mama Piano Bar singers do an incredible job every year. Alison told me that singing in piano bars had helped boost her confidence. It also allows you to learn a lot of material, by singing different songs every night. She performed "As We Stumble Along" from The Drowsy Chaperone.

We had a mix of younger singers, like Mari Solis, who did a Justin Bieber song called "Baby." She's a native New Yorker and is in high school. Her older sister told her all about the competition. Susan Hodgdon was in the competition with me last year, and wanted to try her luck again. She wanted to have fun singing "When You're Good to Mama" from Chicago. She is a government employee for the Connecticut Department of Labor, so she's been very busy helping people during the recession. Marcie Chasen sang a very funny song called "Middle Aged Woman" by singer-songwriter Lisa Koch. She owns her own Market Research Firm. She was a musical theatre performer when she was younger and is now getting back into singing. Kareen Foster is with the singing group Bending Threads. A few other talented members of this group have participated in the contest this year and I have really enjoyed them. Kareen sang "Be a Lion" from The Wiz and loves musical theatre, jazz and soul/ R&B. And last, but definitely not the least, were the comic duo of Booth & Pat. These two are hilarious, and performed "Let It Be" in their own special way. They were happy to join the competition as a duo, and thought it would make them stand out a bit more because they would be different from the other acts. They also said if they didn't make it, they could always blame it on the other person, which was helpful. Booth actually flew in for one day to be a part of the competition, as he is currently working in Utah.

All were happy to be there, getting the chance to sing live in front of people, sharing their voices. Many of the performers expressed that it is very difficult to mount their own shows in hard financial times like these, and this competition was a shot at being able to have a high-quality show produced by the venue, that they might not be able to afford otherwise. I completely understand this, after spending thousands of dollars on my debut show last year. I wanted to have a full band, and it does get very expensive. Sometimes you have to choose between making the show what you really want it to be, or scaling it down. That's what makes the MetroStar Talent Challenge so great, because it gives the winners the chance to do an incredible show that allows them to portray the music in an amazing way, without having to make cuts or changes in instrumentation because they just can't afford to pay for additional musicians.

After this third round of competition, we have seen over 50 performers, and now we make the first major cut. We are going from 51 performers, down to 19 who received the highest scores with the two judges' points and audience scores combined. This coming Monday, August 2nd, we will hear the Top 19 performers sing again and we will be joined by some additional guest judges. As things move on, the judges will also begin providing on-the-spot feedback to the contestants on their performances. This is where it starts getting really exciting! So, I thought I'd leave you this week with just a few pointers that my director, Lina Koutrakos, gave me:

Don't sing with your eyes shut.
If you take the mic out of the stand, either lower the mic stand, or move it out of the way. It is distracting if it is blocking you while you're singing.
And if you have a big belty voice, don't over-sing. Belters sometimes make the mistake of wanting to impress us with big money notes, and sometimes it comes across as screaming the song to the audience. Backing off will draw the audience to you.
Making conscious acting and musical decisions of where to sing your face off, provides more arc to the piece and it will prove to be a stronger performance. I am very excited to watch this contest progress. We have some amazingly talented people this year, as we had in the previous two years, and I look forward to finding out who will take home the prize!

For more on our reporter as performer, see www.kathleenfrance.com