Music Review | Sheera Ben-David
Forget a Sleeve, Just Wear Your Heart on a Songbook

By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: March 2, 2009

In "Let Me Sing and I'm Happy," her third cabaret show at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel, Sheera Ben-David gets to the heart of the matter. Her program is a compelling exploration of the power of singing to change consciousness, not only her own, but yours and mine.

In case you forgot, the late-'20s Irving Berlin standard that is the show's title song exalts an entertainer's ability to conjure cathartic laughter and tears and to get people dancing.

Ms. Ben-David's modern interpretation on Friday evening dispensed with the razzmatazz that Al Jolson, who popularized the song, threw into his performances. She sang a straight, heartfelt rendition that illuminated its essential truth. Whether it is whistling a happy tune or vocalizing, the act of making music is a positive assertion of willpower with communal reverberations that can change the energy in a room, which is exactly what Ms. Ben-David accomplished.

The theme was taken up in two Charlie Chaplin tunes, the old Petula Clark hit "This Is My Song" (written for the film "The Countess of Hong Kong") and "Smile" (composed for "Modern Times"), sung back to back. They revealed the extent to which Chaplin's genius for eloquent simplicity extended to his music. In Ms. Ben-David's interpretation of "Smile," the advice to put on a happy face became a mantra that intensified as the band, led by her brother, Adam Ben-David, kicked in and quickened the pace.

Two Harry Warren novelties, "Zing a Little Zong" and "Dig Dig Dig for Your Dinner" injected notes of pure playfulness. A sequence that began and ended with "Ill Wind," and included "Wild Is the Wind" and Brel's "Song for Old Lovers," compared human emotions and relationships to unpredictable and unmanageable natural phenomena.

After the show's only misfire, the John Denver song "Perhaps Love," sung with Ms. Ben-David's father, Kerry, an opera singer turned cantor who hammed it up, Carly Simon's "Coming Around Again" brought the performance back into focus.

John Bucchino's secular hymn, "Grateful," everyone's favorite finale nowadays, underlined the evening's broader theme of seriously considered joy. Ms. Ben-David, who announced early in the evening that she is pregnant, has every reason to be glad.


Music Review | Sheera Ben-David
Tales of Summer Heat Along With Thoughts of Cooler Times

By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: June 19, 2008

Cole Porter's "Too Darn Hot" opposite Billy Barnes's barroom torch song, "Something Cool": Sheera Ben-David, a theatrically savvy performer with a strong, steady voice, places these standards side by side in her seasonal cabaret show, "Come Summer," at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel.

In that sizzling Porter number from "Kiss Me, Kate," the summer heat is so oppressive that overheated libidos run out of steam. In "Something Cool," a lonely barfly deep in her cups regales a stranger with her probably fictional romantic history.

On Tuesday Ms. Ben-David played that character as a shy, guilty fantasist blurred from drink, casting anxious sideways glances into the murk. The transition from hot to cool was so vivid that you almost felt as if you had stumbled into frigid air-conditioning from a burning sidewalk.

The show, directed by Eric Michael Gillett, has musical supervision by Adam Ben-David (the conductor of "Jersey Boys" and Ms. Ben-David's brother), whose arrangement of "Something's Coming" accentuated its Latin beats and bebop harmonies. The songs compile a seriocomic scrapbook of summer experiences that takes you from the gritty, cosmic carnival of Tom Waits's "Step Right Up," where everything is sold on the cheap, to the damp, shadowy love nest of "Under the Boardwalk," which Ms. Ben-David turned into an audience singalong on Tuesday. "Blame It on the Summer Night" (from "Rags") was transformed from sultry ballad into a salsa-flavored party song.

The cleverest juxtaposition intertwined "Waters of March" with "Here Comes the Sun" to evoke a pristine waterfall making rainbows on a sparkling summer morning. Along with John Denver's "Sunshine on My Shoulders," that George Harrison song is one of the show's two paeans to sunshine.

If the program doesn't venture into the Sahara, it includes one comic evocation of a hellish season in Jason Robert Brown's song "A Summer in Ohio." The narrator of this bright, perky show tune muses sarcastically about being trapped with weird roommates in the summer theater boondocks:

I could wander Paris after dark

Take a carriage ride through Central Park

But it wouldn't be as nice as a summer in Ohio

Where I'm sharing a room with a 'former' stripper and her snake: Wayne.

Most of us have suffered through at least one lost season when endless summer stretched into a bleak eternity; we understand.



Music Review | Sheera Ben-David
In a Crowded Field, a Young Voice Has Her Say

By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: October 20, 2006

A chubby, frizzy-haired New York woman who sings Barbra Streisand and Jacques Brel: that description could apply to so many aspiring performers that it conjures an entire cabaret subgenre. Some, of course, are more talented than others, and Sheera Ben-David, who is appearing through tomorrow at the Oak Room in the Algonquin Hotel, stands out as a fully developed dramatic singer who delivers the goods on several counts.

Ms. Ben-David, who placed second last year in the first Oak Room Young Artist Competition, has a strong expressive voice, phrasing that cuts a swath through a song, and a focused interpretive point of view. Like most singers in the subgenre, she is more expressive when holding back her considerable power than when belting. Ms. Ben-David has a particular affinity for the introspective emotional puzzles of the songwriter John Bucchino, two of whose pieces ("Unexpressed" and "If I Ever Say I'm Over You") are included in her program.

She is also a forthright, amusing raconteur, who recalls having a Guns N' Roses poster as a seventh grader that prompted her parents to accuse her of worshipping the devil. "And I was," she adds cheerfully.

Much of her patter concerns her recent marriage to an investment banker. Her version of "Everything's Coming Up Roses," segued with "You'll Never Get Away From Me," is a darkly humorous autobiographical commentary on a couple living beyond their means. Her husband, she jokes, arrives home from work at 3 a.m. and can't sleep from financial anxiety. Yet they have a housekeeper and eat out in restaurants. "Everything's Coming Up Roses" is her blithe assurance that all will be well.

But will it? The generic hothouse Ms. Ben-David occupies is an extremely crowded arena of jockeying princesses. Her challenge is discovering how to flourish in the great outdoors.

The promise is fulfilled. Since Sheera Ben-David made her cabaret debut several years ago, she’s been heralded as “up-and-coming.” Now, in her first engagement at Feinstein’s at Loews Regency, presenting a new show, A Heart in New York, Sheera has up-and-come. At ease, in command of the stage, bubbling with good humor, and displaying a gentle, deeper vibrato, Sheera is performing better than ever.

Her show is a tribute to the Big Apple, offering many moods: sweet (with the song that titles the show); humor (Rodgers & Hart’s “Way Out West (on West End Avenue)”); yearning (Bernstein/Comden/Green’s “Some Other Time”)’ and intensity (Souther’s “Prisoner in Disguise,” Sondheim’s “Another Hundred People,” Jason Robert Brown’s “King of the World.”). A lovely musical tribute to Sheera’s heritage was the prayer-like “Al Kol Eileh” (“For All These Things”), by Naomi Shemer. Among other highlights: Carly Simon’s anthem-like “Let the River Run,” Irving Berlin’s setting of “Give Me Your Tired,” and, as a finale, Julie Gold’s ever-moving “Good Night, New York.”

Large credit for the show’s quality goes to musical director Adam Ben-David, an in-demand Broadway conductor, the evening’s pianist, and, in off-stage moments, Sheera’s brother. The evening’s top-notch young band was made up of Mat Fieldes on bass, Matt Zebroski on drums, Jake Schwartz on guitar, and Robert Burkhart on cello, the latter performing a moving duet with Sheera on Lucy Simon/Marsha Norman’s gentle work, “Come to My Garden.” For the show’s overall simplicity, honesty and neat pace, credit director Eric Michael Gillett. A tip-off to Sheera’s newest success: a standing ovation by the audience as she ended.

Sheera contnues at Feinstein's through April 3.

Peter Haas
Cabaret Scenes
March 31, 2010
www.cabaretscenes.org

Warm, passionate and compelling, Sheera Ben-David unleashes the dramatic underpinnings of the songs comprising her latest show, Come Summer. Featuring selections like the sensual, "Blame It On the Summer Night" (Strouse/Schwartz) and the quirky honesty of "I Miss the Mountains" (Kitt/Yorkey), Come Summer is the closing show of the Algonquin Hotel's Oak Room current season. Without a false step and never losing focus, Ben-David's interpretive musical power attacks each tune with keen expressiveness. She shares narrative snapshots of her life, linking remembrances of early theatre camp days and current forays to Coney Island, with the summertime ambiance of her songs.

With wide telling eyes, a mass of curly hair, and a rich full-bodied voice, the 30-something Ben-David relays intense theatrical and vocal distinction. In Jobim's "Waters of March," each phrase is well considered and delivered with clarity and understanding. She sinks into the languor of "Lazy Afternoon" (Moross/Latouche) and the dreaminess of Jerry Herman's "Ribbons Down My Back." She faces a young girl's future in "At the Crossroads" (Bricusse), and "Something's Coming" from West Side Story is all energetic promise. Potently, Ben-David embraces the animation of Cole Porter's "Too Darn Hot," and "A Summer in Ohio" (Jason Robert Brown) is a study of relentless frustration. Striding purposely across the small stage space, Ben-David portrays a sidewalk hawker in the super-charged "Step Right Up" (Tom Waits).

One weak choice is "Something Cool," Billy Barnes' urbane lament of a been-around gal, who stops in a bar for a drink and maybe something more. It is one of those songs best suited to an older woman, although Ben-David has pointed out that she uses her own experiences, sometimes traumatic, to convey the song's message from a younger viewpoint. While she delivers "Something Cool" with poignancy, the melancholy depth is lacking. On the other hand, Ben-David unearths the inspiration and motivational core in John Bucchino's "This Moment," which seems to speak to her directly.

Much of the show's appeal is credited to the exciting, creative piano accompaniment by Sheera's brother, Adam Ben-David, currently the musical director of Jersey Boys on Broadway. Mat Fieldes joins them on bass with Damien Bassman on drums. The show was neatly put together by musical director, Eric Michael Gillett.

Sheera Ben-David made her Algonquin Hotel debut in 2006, after coming in second in the Oak Room Young Artist Competition. For that show, she won the 2007 Ira Eaker Back Stage Bistro Award for Special Achievement. This is her second show at the Oak Room this season.

Sheera Ben-David and Come Summer is at the Oak Room through June 28.


Elizabeth Ahlfors
Cabaret Scenes
June 17, 2008
www.cabaretscenes.org

"Music uplifts us," says Sheera Ben-David, and she proves it with her third show in the Oak Room, Let Me Sing and I'm Happy. The first four songs of her show, "How High the Moon" (Lewis/Hamilton)," "Zing a Little Zong" (Warren and Robin), the Gershwins' "Nice Work If You Can Get It," and Irving Berlin's title song, are lilting reminders that spring and rejuvenation is just around the corner. Ben-David has a rich, resonant voice and she built a flowing program of music tastefully chosen and positioned with eloquence. Kudos right off the bat for Eric Michael Gillett's tight direction and Sheera's talented brother, pianist Adam Ben-David for crackerjack arrangements with his band—Mat Fieldes on bass and Damien Bassman on drums— individualizing each selection.

Ben-David does not over-play sultry or zany but she knows how to get an eclectic songbook across with focus and intelligence. She delivers each song with a trained actor's understanding of what the song means, although she does not infuse it with her own personal emotion as much as with an appreciation for what the writer felt. "Song For Old Lovers," for example, the story of a long-time love affair with highs and lows and all the middle grounds, dramatically salutes Jacques Brel's passion, but leaves room for the listener to feel the tangle of anguish and joy.

Selections come in intertwined packages. The romantically seductive “Moondance,” ("One more moondance with you in the moonlight") is a clever tête-à-tête with the get-real “Dig Dig Dig for Your Dinner” ("'Nothin's what you get for free"), a Depression-era tune by Warren and Gordon. Nostalgia, sadness and perseverance inspired a trio of "Brussels" (Brel/Blau), and Charlie Chaplin's "This is My Song" and "Smile," heartbreaking with its fortitude. Harold Arlen/Ted Koehler's fervent "Ill Wind" book-ends two other impassioned reflections of love, "Wild is the Wind (Tiomkin and Washington) and "Song For Old Lovers."

The show is a family affair. Ben-David invites her father, a former Metropolitan Opera singer, to join her in a duet of "Perhaps Love" by John Denver. A bright, affable personality, Ben-David reveals that she is expecting her first child this summer. Even with its melancholy segments, the show reflects a happy time in Sheera Ben-David's life, something uplifting for audiences to feel with her.

Sheera Ben-David continues at the Oak Room through March 7.


Elizabeth Ahlfors
Cabaret Scenes
February 24, 2009
www.cabaretscenes.org

Sheera Ben-David

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