Deborah Zecher Jewish Caroling: The Music of Carole King, Carole Bayer Sager and Carolyn Leigh

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Deborah Zecher

Jewish Caroling: The Music of Carole King, Carole Bayer Sager and Carolyn Leigh

Don’t Tell Mama, NYC, February 8, 2026

Reviewed by Jacqueline Parker

Deborah Zecher
Photo by Helane Blumfield

A perfect recipe for warming up on a cold Sunday evening in February turned out to be a show that featured a lovely rabbi singing the songs of three New York Jewish female songwriters. She sang with a verve and pep that could melt all the recently fallen snow. The full house attested to her popularity and her loyal following.

Deborah Zecher, who is a bona fide rabbi and cantor, used this one-night-only performance as a fundraiser for Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, MS, which was torched by anti-Semitic hatred on January 10. Her previous show at Don’t Tell Mama was Family Matters: All Things Rodgers, Rodgers & Guettel, a loving revue of the musical dynasty that keeps on giving.

Her opening medley wisely featured the three titled women: “Hey, Look Me Over” (Cy Coleman/Carolyn Leigh); “They’re Playing My Song” (Marvin Hamlisch/Carole Bayer Sager); and “Beautiful” (Carole King). She seemed to weave the tunes together in ways that were natural and pleasing.

From her first moment on the stage, Zecher exuded a charm, and her enthusiasm for these pieces was sincere and contagious. She talked about the lives of these women in ways that were not at all tutorial but managed to convey their similarities and differences with intelligence.

The next medley was entitled “They Started Out Young” and featured several numbers Leigh wrote with Moose Charlap for Peter Pan. Zecher’s choice of material was smart, sassy, and balanced. “Everything Old Is New Again” (Peter Allen/Bayer Sager) was sandwiched between “Shakespeare Lied” (Elmer Bernstein/Leigh) and “When in Rome (I Do as the Romans Do)” (Coleman/Leigh).

A medley from King’s Tapestry album was a highlight, and many of the songs had an emotional impact on several members of the attendance. Leigh’s well-known “Young at Heart” (written with Johnny Richards) continues to charm even the most world-weary listeners.

The show ended on an upbeat note with a number by Maurice Sendak and Carole King, “Chicken Soup with Rice,” which was a most appetizing topic on that cold winter night. Kudos to director Lennie Watts and music director Tracy Stark.

Jacqueline Parker

Like Ethel Merman, lifelong New Yorker Jacqueline Parker began her career as a stenographer. She spent more than two decades at the city's premier public agency, progressing through positions of increased responsibility after earning her BA in English from New York University (3.5 GPA/Dean’s List). She won national awards for her work in public relations and communication and had the privilege of working in the House of Commons for Stephen Ross, later Lord Ross of Newport. In the second half of her career, Jacqueline brought her innate organizational skills and creative talents to a variety of positions. While distinguishing herself in executive search, she also gave her talents to publishing, politics, writing, radio broadcasting and Delmonico's Restaurant. Most recently, she hosted Anything Goes! a radio show that paid homage to Cole Porter and by extension the world of Broadway musicals and the Great American Songbook. Other features of the show were New York living, classical music, books, restaurants, architecture and politics. This show highlighted the current Broadway scene, both in New York and around the country through performances and interviews with luminaries including Len Cariou, Charles Strouse, Laura Osnes, Steve Ross and Joan Copeland. Her pandemic project was immersion into the life, times and work of Alfred Hitchcock, about whom she has written a soon-to-be-published article. Jacqueline has been involved in a myriad of charitable causes, most notably the Walt Frazier Youth Foundation, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Sisters of Life, York Theatre, and the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival. She is a proud Founder of Hidden Water. Her greatest accomplishment is the parenting of her son, a lawyer specializing in mediation. She has many pretend grandchildren, nieces and nephews, on whom she dotes shamelessly, as well as a large circle of friends to whom she is devoted. Her interests in addition to theater and cabaret are cooking, entertaining, reading, and spending time on Queen Mary 2.