Karen Mason
And All That Jazz
(Zevely Records)
February 5, 2025
Reviewed by Elliot Zwiebach
Karen Mason is a cabaret treasure, and her latest CD And All That Jazz is a Kander and Ebb treasure trove of familiar and less familiar gems, all beautifully sung. Several songs are, of course, associated with other performers, but Mason puts her own eloquent spin on each one, opting for softer edges and more nuanced takes without losing any emotional essence.
From the exuberance of the title track that opens the album to the calmness of “A Quiet Thing” (Flora the Red Menace) that closes it, Mason is outstanding, with her consistently strong vocals. She is wistful yet dynamic on “Maybe This Time” (the movie version of Cabaret), offers a more toned-down take on “Theme from New York, New York” than either Minnelli or Sinatra, and is more restrained than some in her rendition of the delightful “Ring Them Bells (Liza with a Z).
On one track she offers a mashup that combines a smooth, silky “Wilkommen” (Cabaret) with the sassy bounce of “Life of the Party” (The Happy Time). Another mashup combines the sweet anticipation of “Married” (Cabaret) with the resignation that comes at the end of a relationship in “Sorry I Asked” (New York, New York). The CD also includes Mason’s warm, plaintive take on “My Coloring Book,” a beautifully realized version of “Colored Lights” (The Rink), and a sweet rendition of the tender “Go Back Home (The Scottsboro Boys).
The album demonstrates the songwriters’ range in a pair of quite different songs that both advocate living each day to the fullest. One is the captivating, rueful “Love and Love Alone” (The Visit), in which Mason delivers the simple truth of the lyric without bitterness or regret. The other one (on a separate track) is the bouncy “I’m One of the Smart Ones” (from the unproduced musical Golden Gate, though the song was used in the 2023 Broadway version of New York, New York).
Kudos are also in order for Christopher Denny, who does excellent piano work across all songs, and Barry Kleinbort, who supplies clever lyrics for Mason to substitute during the “Elsie” portion of the song “Cabaret.” For example, reflecting on her roots growing up in suburbia, Mason notes, “A nightclub was a place that just got raided/And Cabaret was just a film Joel Grey did.”
