Christina Bianco & Brad Simmons: The Long and the Short of It

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Christina Bianco & Brad Simmons 

The Long and the Short of It

Birdland, NYC, September 4, 2017

Reviewed by Bart Greenberg for Cabaret Scenes

Brad Simmons &
Christina Bianco

This unlikely team continues a trend in pairing performers who have apparently little in common. Brad Simmons is a rocker; Christina Bianco is a Broadway babe. He’s prone to cynical monologues; she’s the definition of peppy. He’s 6’2”; she’s 4’11”. About all they have in common is they like dogs and men.
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But they found a wonderful middle ground in their music, they mutually enjoy the country and pop music of the end of the last century. Simmons soloed with Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long (All Night)” to open the show, and later a most moving “Summer, Highland Falls” (Billy Joel). He also has a distinctive piano-playing style, seemingly discovering chords and phrases on the spur of the moment.

Of course, no appearance of Bianco’s is complete without her amazing abilities as a mimic.
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At Birdland, three separate sequences were devoted to her talent in this area. A mash-up of unlikely women singing “Tomorrow,” and later “Let It Go,” ranged from Barbra Streisand to Celine Dion to Gwen Stefani to Britney Spears, with a switching from one persona to the next with amazing speed. And not only the voice is captured, but each singer’s body language as well. Even funnier was a series of “unlikely interpretations,” such as Piaf offering “The Winner Takes It All,” and Barbara Walters intoning “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”

Bianco also showed off her own musical voice with lovely versions of “When You Wish Upon a Star,” as well as shared numbers such as “Guilty,” “Feelin’ Groovy” (“The 59th Street Bridge Song”) and the inevitable “Short People.” In this case, the long and the short added up to a far more than average evening.
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Bart Greenberg

Bart Greenberg first discovered cabaret a few weeks after arriving in New York City by seeing Julie Wilson and William Roy performing Stephen Sondheim and Cole Porter outdoors at Rockefeller Center. It was instant love for both Ms. Wilson and the art form. Some years later, he was given the opportunity to create his own series of cabaret shows while working at Tower Records. "Any Wednesday" was born, a weekly half-hour performance by a singer promoting a new CD release. Ann Hampton Callaway launched the series. When Tower shut down, Bart was lucky to move the program across the street to Barnes & Nobel, where it thrived under the generous support of the company. The series received both The MAC Board of Directors Award and The Bistro Award. Some of the performers who took part in "Any Wednesday" include Barbara Fasano and Eric Comstock, Tony Desare, Andrea Marcovicci, Carole Bufford, the Karens, Akers, Mason and Oberlin, and Julie Wilson. Privately, Greenberg is happily married to writer/photographer Mark Wallis, who as a performance artist in his native England gathered a major following as "I Am Cereal Killer."