Pompie’s Place: Hilary Gardner, Lezlie Harrison, Brianna Thomas

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Pompie’s Place

Blues Supper Club with Hilary Gardner,  Lezlie Harrison, Brianna Thomas

 Hosted by Arthur Pomposello

Don’t Tell Mama, NYC, April 13, 2015

 Reviewed by Elizabeth Ahlfors for Cabaret Scenes,

Pompies-Place-Cabaret-Scenes-Magazine_212Pompie sings the blues at Pompie’s Place, evoking an intimate club space, sometime during the 1920s and ’30s, where a hot quintet and a couple of songbirds take the stage and sing the blues. The songs are not always traditional 12-bar blues, but palpable is the mood of dark memories and lost loves and the rhythmic sound of bent notes straight from the soul.

In that mood, Arthur Pomposello, former host and booking manager of the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel, has scheduled five performances at Don’t Tell Mama’s new Blues Supper Club. Striking jazz singer Lezlie Harrison starts the evening with W.C. Handy’s indigenous standard, “Saint Louis Blues,” her voice sultry and dark and delivering her story with stark truth. Another Harrison standout is a belting “Kansas City” (Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller), representing the blues evolution to R&B. With Ken Peplowski going all out on sax and pianist Ehud Asherie’s boogie-woogie, Harrison belts this out with the sass and joy she projects in all her songs.

Brianna Thomas shows a broad range and sure jazz feel in her moody “(When There’s) Darkness on the Delta” (Marty Symes & Al J. Neiburg/ Jerry Levinson AKA Livingston). She harkens back to Lil Johnson’s risque verve with increasingly suggestive lines in “I Keep My Stove in Good Condition.”

Elegant Hilary Gardner, with acclaimed straightforward clarity, delivers the pathos behind the tale of a taxi dancer in “Ten Cents a Dance” by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Not traditionally a blues tune, it still fits neatly into the time frame and she delivers it as a wistful sigh.
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Flawless is one of the catchy ’30s reefer songs, “When I Get Low I Get High” (Marion Sunshine). The three women join together at the end for smooth harmony and soaring lines in “Mood Indigo” and “Blues in the Night” (Harold Arlen/ Johnny Mercer).

The band is led by music director and pianist Ehud Asherie, with Jon-Eric Kellson on trumpet, drumer Jackie Williams, David Wong and Ken Peplowski, whose riffs on reeds heat up every tune.

As host/emcee, Pomposello needs to smooth out, trim and edit his patter. If he does, he’s got a good thing going at Pompie’s Place.
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Additional performances are Sunday May 10 (Mother’s Day) at 1 pm, Monday May 11 at 7 pm, and Thursday May 28 at 7 pm.
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Elizabeth Ahlfors

Born and raised in New York, Elizabeth graduated from NYU with a degree in Journalism. She has lived in various cities and countries and now is back in NYC. She has written magazine articles and published three books: A Housewife’s Guide to Women’s Liberation, Twelve American Women, and Heroines of ’76 (for children). A great love was always music and theater—in the audience, not performing. A Philadelphia correspondent for Theatre.com and InTheatre Magazine, she has reviewed theater and cabaret for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia City News. She writes for Cabaret Scenes and other cabaret/theater sites. She is a judge for Nightlife Awards and a voting member of Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle.